Interstellar

“Mankind was born on Earth…it was never meant to die here.”

I’m always reluctant to watch films that are overhyped – I often find myself disappointed. But I suppose it’s hard to find yourself disappointed when you actually feel like a NASA explorer – one who has transcended space and time – by the time you finish a film. This week, I wanted to explore the beautiful cinematography of Interstellar, director by none other than Christopher Nolan (who has also directed movies like Inception and The Dark Knight for those of you who don’t know!). Nolan’s film explores the grand transcendence of space while selling the intimacy of the individual characters – making the film surprisingly relatable, and in other words, humane.

Interestingly, I also wrote about Interstellar for a paper in my Stellar and Galactic Astronomy class – so I consider myself quite the expert in the scientific phenomenon that Nolan chose to explore in this film. While reading about these, I found that the film successfully employs cinematic elements to help us understand the scientific aspects, as well as the literary and dramatic elements, of this film. If you’re ever going to tackle the issue of the fate of humanity, please make sure to call Nolan to assist you on that.

 I want to start with the discussion of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound in the film. The majority of this film takes place in space – a foreign and unfamiliar place to the majority of the audience. Interestingly, what I noticed right away was that camera shots shot outside the spaceship were accompanied by silence – we could not hear anything. There was no diegetic sound at all, and I believe this was done for multiple reasons. Sound in space only occurs in the form of electromagnetic vibrations that pulsate in similar wavelengths, sounds the human ear cannot perceive. Was Nolan only doing this to adhere to scientific accuracy? During these shots, I found myself holding my breath, waiting for something to happen – it was almost as if I was holding my breath in space myself. By stripping the shots from space of diegetic sound, Nolan communicates the emptiness, the vastness, and the mysteriousness of space. 

Furthermore, the actual musical score of this film is very interesting, because the diegetic sound tends to grow noticeably louder as the action in the film grows more exciting or intense. Typically, we associate a change in the pace of the music or simply the excitement factor of the music as a whole, but I noticed that the music always grew immensely louder when the intensity of action increased. An example of this is seen when Cooper is about to dock Endurance onto the rotating body in space. As a viewer, I think Nolan’s decision to use this type of music score is important in signaling to the viewer than something exciting is about to happen without distracting the viewer from the action at hand.

Throughout this film, I developed the feeling that Nolan was playing with two very different ideas: the grade nature of unexplored space and the fate of humanity versus the intimate nature of the relationship between Cooper and his team as well as Cooper and his family (specifically his daughter Murphy). Cinematic elements are critical in communicating these two very different ideas in the same movie.

Nolan often uses establishing shots as a means of setting the space of the scene – the spacecraft may not be very large but the outer environment is immensely vast. While the crew members inside the spacecraft are attempting to navigate through a tough area, or simply traveling through the emptiness of space, the camera often uses editing techniques in which it cuts to shots of the spacecraft in space and moves in dolly fashion to follow the action of the spacecraft. By cutting from shots inside the spacecraft to those outside the spacecraft Nolan successfully renews a sense of suspense and tension in the viewer – as outsiders we are afraid that something may go wrong. Furthermore, when the crew members are on different planets the camera focuses on the scenes in specific ways to stir specific feelings and responses. Oftentimes, camera framing techniques use long shots and wide shots to film the crew members on the planets.

The camera also shoots from extremely high angles, completely zoomed out, in which it looks down on the crew members. These two techniques successfully capture the surrounding scene of the individuals – planets that are vast, barren, and empty. This illustrates the relatively small nature of the individuals compared to the grand issue they are tackling – both literally and metaphorically. Furthermore, the barren land that surrounds the individuals instills a feeling of loneliness, isolation, and hopelessness in the audience. This is done intentionally, so that the audience is always hoping for some sort of big break.

As I mentioned earlier, Nolan also makes several key decisions in cinematography that aim to sell the individual moments of intimacy that help characterize this film. Most importantly is Cooper’s incessant need to finish the mission as soon as possible so that he may return to his family. The camera often captures Cooper’s almost aggressive nature by zooming in to his face in order to allow for close-ups that emphasize Cooper’s hardened face – he is serious when it comes to his family, and there is no time for playing around. One of the most touching scenes in the whole film is when he returns to the spacecraft from Planet Miller and finds that 23 years have passed since he first left, and he watches the radio messages that have been left from his family.

The camera makes it a point to gradually pan over onto Cooper’s face and zoom into his face, using a soft frontal lighting from the screen to emphasize his eyes (which have tears in them). This scene captures the intensity to which Cooper misses his family and the desperate feeling of longing that is left in him. Simultaneously, Nolan keeps the audience connected with Murphy (Cooper’s daughter) by cross cutting what is occurring in space with what is occurring on Earth – we see Earth subjectively, through Murphy’s point of view. By cross cutting between space and earth, Nolan reminds us that there is a connection that transcends Earth and space – love.

 The climax of the film occurs when Cooper is put into an alternate dimension – a visual representation of the dimension of time – the idea is both intriguing and revolutionary. But I don’t want to spoil the main idea of this film by discussing it – seriously watch this film!

“Do not go gentle into that good night; Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”