Interstellar

Annotation for KRRR! 2016 by Radomír D. Kokeš

Christopher Nolan is one of the most successful and most watched contemporary filmmakers, and most of the films he has directed are accompanied by passionate debates about whether they are complex masterpieces or self-centered hubris. The loudest discussions were probably in connection with the year before last's Interstellar, which was shot on traditional film materials by the technical old-timer Christopher Nolan and there is also a 70mm version of it, thanks to which this year in Krnov we will also go into the depths of space to search for (not only) a new place for the survival of dying humanity...

But why were such heated disputes between the creator's supporters and opponents in connection with Interstellar? The ambitions of the Batman trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises) were assessed in the context of comic book adaptations. The ambitions of Memento, The Perfect Trick, and Inception were evaluated primarily with respect to the history of Hollywood experiments with the possibilities of cinematic storytelling. However, Interstellar also seems ambitious in a much more general context, which is why it is often compared to films such as Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Both Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey are primarily philosophical science fiction, which direct the viewer primarily towards hidden meanings on the one hand and open explanations of what is seen on the other. In this respect, Interstellar follows other branches of literary science fiction, which firstly explored the boundaries between the rationalizable human desire for knowledge (science) and irrational human weaknesses (emotions), and secondly were well aware of the narrative norms of their own genre (classical science fiction has many forms, development lines, and narrative patterns).

Unlike Nolan's previous films, however, Interstellar does not let pure fascination with the architecture of the work rule. A film told backwards, a film told through two diaries on the border between trick and magic, a film told in several parallel levels of a dream - each of them was primarily a game with a plot, the power of which lay, among other things, in the rediscovery/rediscovery of the narrative possibilities of the film. You cannot adequately convey it by retelling the story, you have to see it. In the case of Interstellar, however, the plot does not subordinate the story told or the fascinating but completely purposeful fictional world, but is in harmony with them.

I do not consider the philosophical overlaps, which are usually dependent on a certain systemic openness of the work, as a reason for discussion, whereas Interstellar openly and with regard to the aforementioned traditions, understandably strives for closure. I see the reason rather in that unexpected effort to achieve harmony between the architecture of the plot, between the narrated story about the role of rationally incomprehensible emotions - love, fear - in rational characters (so much so that you feel even with robots) and between the fictional world of several other worlds, which exists in different times, in different spaces and in different logics.

As if Christopher Nolan had closed a certain line of his work with Interstellar in one synthesizing work (for now), which is indicated after an unexpectedly long silence and the revelation that the next project will be a historical war drama about Dunkirk. A parallel is offered with another creator, whose every film has always been impatiently awaited, admired and damned, considered the best and worst of Hollywood's narrative possibilities - and at the same time, we can speak of him as perhaps the only director whose name the majority of viewers really associate with specific films and with specific audience expectations.

He too began to seek artistic respect in historical materials... and for a long, long time he had wanted to make Interstellar.