Warning: some spoilers follow…

Chris Nolan’s “Interstellar” takes you on a trip.

It’s a journey. It’s art. It’s beautiful. It’s satisfying. It’s emotional. It’s a lot of really beautiful things/words all blended in a 400 million dollar blender with 64 ounces of Swedish gold.

After witnessing the marvel that is Interstellar, I read a review by IGN’s Roth Cornet. A particular line in the intro of the review made me wonder:

“When a creator is deemed a visionary and/or a master of their craft in their lifetime, the viewer can become either more critical or more forgiving.”

If you are a big fan of someone’s work, do you become more critical of his latest piece, or do you go easier on him? Despite its marvel, the movie had its imperfections.

Within the first 30 minutes, the audience is informed that this indeed is a “science fiction” movie. Until recently, I was not even aware that a majority of the “sciency” dialogue actually made perfect sense…if you were a physicists. As in, they didn’t make that shit up.
Right from the beginning, the movie informs the audience that it will be taking a very “theoretical route”. Given the message, I prepared myself to accept anything the movie throws at me, regardless of how bizarre or nonsensical it is from a “sciency” perspective.

Chris Nolan’s portrayal of human emotion is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Looking back, it’s quite interesting how so many movies try to pull these type of emotional-moments off but fall flat. It reminded me of the difference top-notch actors and writers combined can make, regardless of whether or not you’ve seen very similar scenes done millions of times before in other movies.

Without getting into anything specific, there was one scene in particular that featured an individual passing away. For some reason, the emotional part of my brain thought that it would make perfect sense if it replaced the dying individual with my girlfriend. I’m not even sure why the emotional part of my brain thought that this is something that it should do, but it did…and I started tearing up.

Moving on, another point that I found very interesting was the decision to use a bookcase as the metaphor of what lies beyond a black hole. This reminded me of last year’s Communications class. We were given the opportunity to have a Skype chat with Paul Born to discuss his book titled “Community Conversations”. Given that he is such an active blogger, I decided to ask him a question: Why bother making a book if you have an active and popular blog running? He’s already reaching so many people on a daily basis through his blog, so why bother making a book? His response: A book is timeless.

Until recently, I actually thought that it was a dry and half-assed response.

“The connection between us and our kids and us and our parents and the fragility of that. It’s no coincidence that it’s a bookcase that is the symbol for that sequence in the film, because there’s no better symbol for the repository of information passed down from one generation to the next….and the idea that humans have created a mechanism to time travel, to hurl ideas into the future, it sort of bookends. Books are a time machine.” – Jonathan Nolan

Even if you die, your thoughts and ideas will continue to be passed down from generation to generation. A book is timeless.

“If you are a big fan of someone’s work, do you become more critical of his latest piece, or do you go easier on him?”

To answer my question, at first I found myself going easy on him. My inner fanboy yelled “This is Christopher Nolan we’re talking about!”. Over time, I realized that it’s not the case that I’m willing to go easy on him to the point that I would blind myself of the movie’s imperfections. Despite some cheesy dialogue about “love” and a straight-up dumb death scene, I find these small imperfections extremely forgivable given how amazing the rest of the movie is. He really is the “Naughty Dog” of movies. In conclusion, I will continue to be a believer in Nolan’s mastery….

Because love transcends all time and space.

Follow me @Marwanalshafei where I spark rainbows within people’s subconscious and make the world go round n’ round.