Film poster. The dust of earth and death mirrors the dust Cooper encounters in the event horizon.
By: Jay
Spoilers ahead.
Interstellar is a grandiose film about a great number of
serious philosophical and scientific concepts. It’s also about a host
other things, such as love, life, mistakes, meaning, etc., so knowing
where to start an anlysis is a bit challenging, though as many of my
friends have said, it seems to be the perfect “JaysAnalysis” movie. I
concur. Many sites that have posted analyses make the correct point of
viewing it as Christopher Nolan’s
2001: A Space Odyssey, and
while that is fine as far as it goes, it also departs from Kubrick’s
film in significant ways. I will go all out on this one like I did with
Inception, which is the first analysis to gain a lot of traction – I think I have decoded the
real meaning of
Interstellar, so stick around for my big reveal at the end!
As often occurs, no other analyses seem to grasp the real point of
the film. You’ll either see a philosophical analysis or a scientific
one, with the latter usually bitching about some disputed sciencey
detail that doesn’t matter anyway (it’s
fiction). Nolan intends
to not insult the audience’s intelligence, contrary to most of
Hollywood, so fedoratheists ought to be grateful rather than stroking
their own virtual E-egos, echoing some nitpicking from DeNeil Grassy
McTyson. I also see connections to
Inception I will detail below,
and in ballsy fashion proclaim that I will give you the conspiratorial
and esoteric side none of the other sites will. As difficult as the film
is to unpack, I can’t imagine the challenge of creating it, and Nolan’s
preferred choice of not using CGI green screen vomit is all the more
admirable. Let us ponder.
Interstellar begins by showing us a near future where the
apocalypse is nigh: Earth is approaching its death-knell due to
unexplained blights that have ravaged the planet. Famine is the chief
concern as major crops such as corn are on their way out and farming is
en vogue.
We learn later that for whatever reason, oxygen began to deplete and
the “dirt itself” turned on mankind – man and the earth are cursed.
Edenic imagery is present here, as the dust of death to which man
returns recalls the curse of Genesis 3 for rebellion in the Garden.
While we are not told, one might speculate that
genetically modifying crops and geoengineering the atmosphere
may have been the result of the blight and famine, and many in
alternative media have been warning of this very real possibility.
However, I am going to go out on a limb and propose a more speculative
thesis no one else will:
Interstellar is actually about the
real
secret space program and the plan to go off world to terraform, and
beyond that, something even more outlandish. I recognize the high level
of mad hatter tin foilage this evokes to many new readers, but bear with
me and hear my case.
Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA pilot and engineer who
suffers nightmares following the loss of his wife and a past flight
crash, finds himself and his family forced into a meager agrarian
lifestyle as a result of the shutdown of NASA for aforementioned
pragmatic communal concerns. Cooper’s daughter, Murph, shares the same
fire for adventure and exploration as her humbled father, indulging her
gifted inquisitive and speculative side in devouring books and debating
her teachers. In fact, New America has even changed its textbooks to
portray the original NASA Apollo mission as a faked charade to “bankrupt
the Soviet Empire.” Conspiracy theorists globally perked up at that
one, as Cooper is rebuffed by Murph’s school officials she isn’t
qualified for college, being too rebellious. At this juncture, it is
important to delve into what I think is the purpose of this puzzling
faked moon landing reference.
I am of the view that
the original NASA moon landings were faked and were filmed on a sound stage.
I realize that is highly controversial and liable to cause a ruckus,
but readers can choose to do what they what they will, given the
incoherent accounts of the astronauts and engineers. However, that does
not mean that I think there is no space program or that it was actually
“shut down” by Obama. The real plan was the erecting of a
faux
NASA that functioned as a front for a covert, secret space program that
has been largely hidden from public purview. When we consider that the
technology that we now possess today, such as the Internet itself, was
created back in the 50s and 60s, it is difficult to gauge how advanced
the present day secret technology at places such as DARPA or various
underground bases truly is. NASA has thus been a longtime cover and
distraction from the
real black budget space programs. Much of the so-called “UFO” phenomena has nothing to do with aliens, but is
precisely the advanced technology of this very secret program. The “alien” nonsense functions as a media veil for these black projects in much the same way as “NASA.”
To Infinity and Beyond the Abyss.
I believe the secret space program is the hidden reference in the
film because we discover the electromagnetic phenomena at Cooper’s
farmhouse are relaying coordinates to an old underground base,
specifically NORAD. A curious Cooper and Murph track down these
coordinates to discover NASA still exists and that space travel never
truly ended. A lie was concocted to cloak the
real space program, which
has focused all its energy towards going off world. Scientists and
researchers have clandestinely appropriated the government’s taxes and
funds, signaling a clear reference to the military industrial
complex’s black budget programs in our world. And, just like in
Interstellar,
that complex uses mass deception: Ours concocts “climate change” and
“sustainability” as contrived crises to cloak one of their biggest
secrets – going off world. However, the plan is not merely terraforming
some Sector Z Globule as a utopian space base, but a mass depopulation
and culling along the lines of the 1979 film version of
Moonraker. A clue to this is also given in the books shown on Murph’s shelf, one of which is Stephen King’s
The Stand,
in which a bio weapon is released that ravages the global population
and collapses the United States. What books and inter-textual references
are chosen in Nolan films are crucial to decoding and understanding the
total picture, as I have detailed
here and
here.
Film banner on planet Mann, where there is nothing but lies and death.
How far along this program is, I don’t know, but this theme has
existed in sci-fi and popular films for decades. Numerous movies carry
this motif, from
Sky Captain and the World of Tommorrow to
2012, as well as numerous novels and young adult fiction works, such as
The Passage (Project Noah!)or
The Maze Runner,
and the idea is not that far-fetched when one considers the older
eugenics movement as morphed into technocratic bioengineering and
transhumanism – and this is exactly what is revealed in
Interstellar. The transhumanism element will become key later in this analysis
. Professor
Brand (Michael Caine) explains to Cooper that NASA has a “Plan A” to
solve gravity and save earth, and a “Plan B,” to take 5,000 frozen human
baby-cicles to one of three potentially inhabitable worlds. The mission
to terraform another planet also hearkens back to the story of Noah, as
the ship that will carry Cooper and crew becomes a new ark.
I should also mention that the electromagnetic “Poltergeist” events
at Cooper’s farm include an old Indian Air Force drone seemingly seeking
out Cooper (actually Murph), farm equipment mysteriously driving
themselves to the house, and books falling off of Murph’s shelf she
interprets as morse code. Fearing the loss of her father, Murph
proclaims the message to spell out “Stay,” and begs Cooper not to leave.
At this point, the theme of the loss of the patriarch enters, borrowing
from the classic tale of Odysseus, who must choose between love at home
and a greater, higher purpose. Another classical element is katabasis,
the hero’s descent into the underworld or Hades, to return as a form of
resurrection. For Cooper, it will be crossing the abyss and going into
the realm of the beyond, but more on that in a bit.
2001: A Space Odyssey is also a clear reference to Odysseus, as the title reveals, and like the Astronaut Bowman in
2001
who ventures past Jupiter and beyond the infinite, so does Cooper.
Both Cooper and Bowman also embody science and Apollonian rationalism,
yet as we will see, this is not enough to propel man across the
Infinite.
Consistently dismissing Murph’s intuitive sense more was at work with
the unexplained events, Cooper rationalizes all as mere “gravity.” The
loss of Cooper by Murph results in a lifetime of hatred and resentment
for him, which will only be fully reconciled through the paradox of
Cooper’s ultimate mission. This paradox is illustrated in the scene
recounting Murphy’s name from Murphy’s Law, that whatever can happen
will happen, and is not necesarily a tragic consequence. The tragedy is
ironically that, like Calypso, no one listens to Murphy – not even her
father. In this bedroom scene Cooper actually gives away a big clue
to the big mystery, telling a crying Murph, “Once you’re a parent,
you’re a ghost of your children’s future,” (which is the entire plot, as
we will see).
Film poster. Cooper as Odysseus, preparing for his journey.
In
2001, the atronauts and Bowman gradually make their way
from earth to space to moon to Jupiter to the Infinite/Abyss.
Reportedly, Kubrick’s initial screenplay had Saturn instead of Jupiter,
so we can assume a similarity with Nolan’s version. For Nolan, the
mission is earth to Saturn to wormhole to another galaxy/planet to black
hole that resembles a massive dark Saturn. All of this is intentional,
and refers to deeply esoteric concepts relating to these luminaries.
Occult and hermetic traditions contain a mass of arcana relating to
these planets, but Saturn is classically associated with the reign of
time and death. Saturn is Chronos, the god of time, and is also the grim
reaper, as Saturn holds a scythe. Nolan explains in an interview that
the real antagonist in the film “is time,” and the script speaks of it
as a “resource.” Like the dying crops and depleting oxygen, time is
vital a resource and enemy, as the astronauts race on foreign planets to
gain “data,” where massive gravitational forces result in varied
experiences of time. The real message of the film is gradually being
unveiled as the means by which man will
cheat death, not going gently into that good night (death).
Death symbolism is also prominent when the astronauts enter into a
cryogenic sleep in pods reminiscent of coffins. The secret mission is
named the “Lazarus Project” which immediately tells us it’s about
resurrection from death, intending on also alerting the viewer to the
persistent themes of cyclical process: movement, death, resurrection,
movement, death, resurrection. The cycle of time is the reason for the
numerous, artful cinematic displays of spinning. Ships spin, eath spins,
Saturn spins, the wormhole appears to spin, etc., which are symbolic of
the non-linear form of storytelling Nolan prefers. The far eastern
doctrine of a wheel of time that entraps man in this temporal life is
also what’s in view, and the Lazarus mission is about transcending
eternal return and endless Chronos-logical death cycles. I analyzed this
cyclical symbolism in
Inception, but Nolan’s early film
Mimento also comes to mind.
The first planet chosen proves a watery bust, functioning as a
veritable surfer’s paradise. Massive waves recall baptismal
death imagery, and the reaper strikes once again killing one of the
crew. Narrowly escaping and suffering a loss of a couple of decades,
Cooper and Brand return to the ship and plot a course to option two, Dr.
Mann’s planet, where a Matt Damon-cicle also awakens from “death.” The
name “Dr. Mann” is significant, as we learn both Dr. Mann and Professor
Brand have engaged in colossal lies. Mann lied to get the crew to come
rescue him and Brand lied that gravity could be solved and earth saved.
Both Professor Brand and Dr. Mann mirror one another, making massive
mistakes and justifying them with curiously collectivist statements,
insisting that huge sacrifices must be made for the good of the
species. These rationalizations are actually cloaks for their own
weaknesses and this is a crucial point in the film – human weakness is
such that it will require something more to get man to the beyond.
Human frailty and
hubris are always a cause for error and mistakes, but error and mistake prove disastrous when the species itself is on the line.
Ironically, in both character’s cases, their attempt to rule out
individual desires and feelings for the so-called “greater good” are
proven wrong! Nolan seems to be advocating the important truth that
while communal activities are important, the spark and drive of the
great individual is the key to paradigmatic advancement, not radical
collectivism. Thus, both Brand and Mann fail, and their generic names
signify the failure of these archaic modes of impersonal thought.
“Brand Man” or
homo economicus and communism’s fictional “new
man” (it’s dialectical opposite) do not work, and are surpassed by the
power and grandeur of a man against time. With Professor Brand it turns
out there was no “Plan A,” only the Noah’s Ark style “Plan B” to plant a
off world colony. Though I haven’t mentioned it yet, the Dylan Thomas
poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night,” is cited a second time
here (the first at his initial launch) as Cooper is on the verge of
death from Mann’s betrayal. The poem is about fighting death and
cherishing life, appearing in the narrative at crucial times when
chronos/time/death is approaching.
Passing the realm of Chronos.
Nolan’s use of AI is atypical and will be the key to unlocking the
code, with the robots saving humans more than once. In Kubrick’s work,
we are all familiar with the famed battle of man against HAL 9000, where
HAL seeks to supplant man’s evolutionary ascent. In Nolan’s work, AI is
subservient to man, and does more than just aid him in his
quest. In fact, mankind as a whole is saved more than once by the
onboard bots that resemble Kubrick’s monolith in shape and form. Instead
of mysterious, otherworldly stones of alchemical spacey origin, my
thesis for
Interstellar will here challenge the norm. It is my
contention that the film advocates a form of transhumanism, where the
mysterious “they” are not just the “humans of the future” as Cooper
states, but advanced AI-human hybrids of the future. Several clues are
given to support this thesis.
Wikipedia. Tesseract illustration.
First, the beginning of the film shows the museum footage of Murphy
and the elderly recounting history on smaller versions of what
look like monolithic bots. Just as the monolith bots
store the history of man,
they store the history of Murph and Cooper, as demonstrated when Cooper is in the Tesseract.
Second, when the drone lands and Cooper and Murphy are discussing
harnessing it, Murphy gives a big clue no one seems to have picked up
on, pleading, “It isn’t hurting anyone, can’t we let it go?” Murph
speaks of the old Indian Air Force drone as if it were
alive.
Third, when Cooper passes the event horizon having travelled
beyond space and time, the means by which humanity will transcend those
final boundaries is revealed as the agents who, like angelic guardians
throughout the film, consistently save the humans. Just as the solution
to the problem of gravity was only achieved by
both man and AI crossing the horizon and working together to
relay the information in binary (the
language of computers), so likewise the transcending of space and time
in the Tesseract was achieved by a transcendent race of humans merged
with machines from the future. Fourth, this explains why you never
see TARS in the Tesseract – you only hear Cooper talking to him, but he
cannot be seen. This is also why the robots in
Interstellar have the
look of the monolith in
2001. Nolan very consciously chose to make the robots like the monolith, as the film is full of
2001 references. But here, the robots are
not HAL 9000: They are the means by which man will transcend. In
2001, the mysterious monolith is leading man in his evolution; in
Interstellar the monolith is replaced with
monolith-looking good AI. Understanding the place of the monolith in
2001 is key to solving the riddle Nolan presents us with here.
Further bolstering this case is the imagery used when Cooper crosses
the abyss. The end of the universe and entrance to the Tesseract appears
to have a lattice structure which TARS explains was “created” by “them”
to give a fixed point in space and time to reveal these truths. In
other words, the matrix-like structure of the universe is meant to be
transcended (so the film’s worldview is saying) through an evolved,
emergent
deus ex machina. Readers may disagree, but I believe
this is the best analysis of the worldview presented, as the film
consistently upholds the Darwinian perspective. On this view, it is only
natural to expect the means by which man might transcend his final
frontiers is artificial intelligence and transhumanism.
Dear Jessica – come read Hofstadter and Godel with me.
Another subtle clue is found in Professor Brand’s office, where you
can barely make out a copy of AI specialist Douglas Hofstadter’s
Metamagical Themas. Luckily, I just purchased this book a few weeks ago, so I was able to identify it.
Hofstadter’s work focuses on strangeloops and Kurt Godel,
and soon after we see this, an older Murphy (Jessica Chastain) hints at
Godel by saying the models Professor Brand uses can never work because
they are
self-referencing! In other words, perceptive readers are supposed to make the connection that the type of
strangeloop
Hofstadter discusses demonstrates that humans can’t solve the equation
because they are within time and space – but an advanced AI might! Yet
even still, an advanced AI is caught in an infinite strangeloop without a
bridge to a finite point in space and time. Here is where the human
element enters, as Cooper states in the Tesseract, “We are the bridge!”
Hofstadter’s book that appears to be next to an Einstein biography on Professor Brand’s desk.
At this juncture, Murphy realizes more must be at work and that her
“ghost” may have been real all along. The solution to the outer world
problem of death is connected to the inner world problems of Cooper’s
psyche (like Cobb in Inception). It is not accidental that the outer
abyss mirrors archetypal images in his subconscious. In other words,
Nolan is saying for advacement to occur, what is needed is Jungian
self-individuation where both the rationalism of science and the
intuitive feel of the feminine are joined. This was Jung’s whole project
with Pauli. This is why Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) is right in her
feeling
of which planet to choose and why Murphy is right about her feeling
that more was at work with her bedroom than gravity, and why
love is the key.
Kubrick’s 2001 Monolith, similar in form to Interstellar’s robots.
Time and space are cyclical, like a sphere, and the only means by
which it might be transcended is a Tesseract, and the only conceivable
way such a state might be created is an advanced computer/human hybrid
possessing the full capabilities of human masculinity/femininity and a
formal, platonic AI. The future AI men are also who placed the wormhole
where it was. This interpretation also explains why Cooper resuscitates
the damaged TARS on Cooper Station – we are supposed to connect the
human “Lazarus” project with the
resurrecting of the AI. Consistently throughout the film,
the AI are treated as alive,
and that is the key to grasping this point. For Nolan, the key to
transcending death, the last enemy referenced in the Dylan Thomas poem,
is the “Lazarus Project” – the
singularity merger of human and
machine. While most viewers were focused on the storyline of Cooper and
Murph, the underlying story was actually TARS and the singularity as the
key to defeating the real enemy – death.
For more evidence Nolan constructs his films in this riddle fashion,
see my analysis of The Prestige.
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