Swaroop King

Swaroop King
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Saturday 20 December 2014

INTERSTELLAR and 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY


I tend to get more drawn towards something that I do not completely understand than towards something that I know inside from out. Because when the blanks are left out for you to fill, you might be surprised to find the innumerable ways you can arrange the set of answers to obtain completely different and far fetched conclusions. That's why people who like poetry, like it. And until a film can come as close to poetry as Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, it cannot boast of trying to outsmart it.

No. I am not trying to belittle "Interstellar" here. I am trying to establish that Interstellar just didn't even attempt to outsmart 2001, but rather tried to pay homage to it or tried to fill in the blanks it left, with its own set of answers.

In 2001 (From here on wards 2001 means 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY) we see the film begin with man's ancestors the apes living their own life of reality and fear until a strange object, a black monolith suddenly makes its appearance out of nowhere. The curious apes (hence our ancestors) touch it and after that we can see an ape making a tool out of a bone and using it to kill its competitor.
The scene emphasizes that the contact with the monolith has made the ape smarter and has drawn it closer towards becoming a man. What is inside the monolith and how can it make people reach  their next level of evolution is what puzzles the audience, and some people might have blamed the director for not explaining it. But the funniest part is, why do you think he has put a black monolith, which doesn't have any inscriptions or which is not in any shape that resembles any religious symbol, which is neither beautiful, nor horrifying? Because he wants it to stand as a symbol for something that has the answers to the most complex questions and hence it doesn't bother to feel the urge to represent or resemble something. Because it is a whole. And the whole is always the simplest because there is no part of it that it yet needs to get attached to, to make sense. It is only the part of the question or the part of the answer that represents or resembles something. The whole doesn't need to do it. It is the infinity and hence the zero. Only because you cant yet figure out what or how this world makes sense, you keep digging and push yourself to the farthest reaches of your imagination. There would be an answer and that might sound utterly ridiculous when you understand it in its entirety, not because the answer is dumb but because it becomes finite and is nothing when compared to the infinite length your question blew your speculation to. The rule is simple. If you want to create something the size of the universe, just write something on a paper, and leave the story uncompleted. It will give a possibility to N number of interpretations and hence can accommodate even the last particle of dust in the last corner of the furthest galaxy. Your creation is just an unfinished story on a paper, but it is as vast as a vessel that could fit a thousand universes. Thats what God did to man. He created everything with his limitless knowledge and gave man the ability to comprehend only a part but not the whole. hence man kept exploring, wondering and digging and he never ceases to being a man. Not because the universe is limitless but because the answer is hidden.  And that's why a simple, smooth black monolith. That's why Kubrick is a genius. That's why Interstellar can never be as big as 2001.

See, all of the above might not be the reason for Kubrick to choose a black monolith to be the object but I have speculated all of this just because Kubrick left space to accommodate my imagination. That's what "Interstellar" doesn't.
(Nolan rather tries to detail it down. He gives a very well explained and scientifically accurate explanation that gravity is the key for communication through space and time.) But that's why it manages to stand as a more original film than what it would have been if it chewed a little more from 2001.

What stopped me from having further doubts whether Interstellar is inspired from 2001 is the third act. They are noticeably similar. In Interstellar, Coop falls into a black hole which happens to be a place that the future humans build a tesseract which facilitates Coop to send signals to his past self, as time is represented there as a physical dimension. The audience are shocked because his daughter's bedroom is the last thing they expect to see inside a black hole.

In 2001, Bowman encounters a monolith in space and is teleported through a "star gate" which is
visually conveyed to the viewer through some best special effects (of that time) and ends up in a hotel suite kind of room where he sees his old self having his dinner. The old Bowman turns back and looks at the astronaut Bowman, comes near him, and we do not see the astronaut bowman any more in that room (The astronaut has become the old man) The old man similarly becomes Bowman-near-death. And the dead bowman becomes a child the size of a heavenly body. As surrealistic as it sounds, this is the third act of 2001. It is hinted that the monoliths one of which transferred Bowman through space and time to a hotel suite and made him a star child are placed in space by aliens who are more advanced than humans and want to help humans evolve away from their limitations. The final sequence of 2001 looks like it appears in Bowman's head and hence some think it is not real. But as Dumbledore says to Harry Potter why should something taking place in the head mean that it is not real? Real or metaphysical, the sequence hints at man crossing the hurdle of his limitations and achieving a superiority over his past self and it is not ironical that he looks like a child after he achieves the ultimate transformation. What does that mean? That the final monolith has made him into a God by feeding him all the data of the universe and transforming him into a giant embryo (thus pushing away physical limitations)? Is God just an alien more advanced than humans?
The aliens are not shown in the fim but talked about. That is a very fine choice as that lets us visualize them as beings who do not necessarily have to be bound by physical appearances. It buys us the convenience of believing that they are advanced beyond the humanity's perceived limits of physics.

That's where "Interstellar" takes off. In "Interstellar", the people who placed the worm hole near Saturn are not aliens. "They" are not "aliens". "They" are "us". Interstellar prefers a more "real" and a more comprehensible(at least to who know physics) depiction of the redemption of humanity. Nolan, rather than going poetic, went scientific. That hits the right note with today's generation who are used to precision, specificity and accuracy. Interstellar in one sense, is the fine grained version of the more abstract 2001.

However 2001 chooses to tone down its emotional inclinations because it looks up to the ultimate enlightenment and the ultimate transformation as its peak, it's flag has to fly high above the emotions of us lesser beings. The coldness with which it shows us the proceedings asks us to try to cope up with the nullifying of emotions that the transformation brings. Interstellar does the reverse. It highlights the human emotions and goes to the extent of making love to become the key to the redemption of humanity.

While 2001 penetrates your subconscious and paints a bewildering abstract masterpiece in your mind, Interstellar touches your heart.

Long live great cinema