Interstellar

I watched this cerebral sci fi flick over the weekend and I have to say it lived up to my expectations.

In the near future, a global blight has taken out Earth’s crops, and the remains of NASA plan to send the population to a new planet by traveling through a wormhole. The pilot, Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, must choose between being there for his family, or being there for the human race.

The science and ideas behind this movie are very big and very deep, yet it avoids the pitfall of being overly complicated or confusing. And at the end of the movie I was left with a sense of wonder, instead of a sense of ‘wait, what did I just watch? None of that made any sense!’ like so many movies seem to leave me with these days.

In one of the opening scenes, Cooper finds out that his daughter is being taught that the moon landing never happened, and was just propaganda used to trick the Soviets into bankruptcy. The world has become farmers, no longer explorers. Ideas and ingenuity are no longer needed, just farmers, and food. The situation reminded me of this article about poor people and ‘bandwidth poverty’. When you are so focused on just making it day to day, you don’t have time to think about bigger thoughts, to have creative ideas or make progress. You’re just.. living.

I liked the message of ‘do not go quietly into that good night’. Look up and out at the stars, instead of down at the ground and your feet.

I highly recommend this movie. The only complaint I had was that the music was just too damn loud and made my ears ache. I don’t think it’s me getting old, I’ve never experienced this kind of loudness in a theater before. Other than that, one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.