Interstellar

I just rewatched the movie Interstellar and it hit me like a pile of bricks. I haven’t seen this movie since its initial release in 2014, and back then I was an itty bitty boy so most of the deeper messages just glazed over me. But damn, this is a powerful movie for sure. What really got me was when we see the recordings of Cooper’s family.

Let me preface this by saying I literally know nothing about space, I don’t know how big or far anything is or how long it would take to travel places. I watch Star Wars okay, I’m spoiled. I think light speed and hyper drive’s are real and you can just get to wherever you want as quickly as a transition slide.

Interstellar is a film that bends over backwards to play around with your perception of time. The whole movie is a smoke and mirror show and the situation and end goals are constantly changing. The first act of the film leads you to believe that there’s a chance the astronauts can find a solution and make it back to Earth quick enough to rescue humanity. I initially estimated the whole trip would take 3 or 5 years at most, but oh Lord,forgive me for how wrong I was.

Anyways, after getting shot into space, the astronauts go into cryo-sleep and hibernate for 2 years; so at that point I’m thinking “2 years there, one or 2 years AT MOST to find a solution, then 2 years back to Earth”, sounds reasonable.

When they reach the big wave pool planet , 1 hour translates to 7 human years. I’m thinking there’s no way they are coming back in under an hour, so at that point I was just waiting to hear the damage. When I heard they were down there for 23 years my heart literally jumped out of my body. No lie, it hit so hard my heart stopped and needed a few seconds to parse what it just heard. I felt for Cooper there, we both knew it was over, he won’t ever see his kids again.

So he goes to watch the recordings that his kids sent to him and this is when we get to the heavy part. We’re I’m learning about what happened over the past 23 years alongside him, I’m seeing everything through his eyes. I am one with Cooper, I am Matthew McConaughey. So I watch the recordings of my son growing up, finding love, and starting a family. I even get to see my newborn grandson for the first time. I’m both relieved and overjoyed; watching my son become a man and start his own family is an utterly rewarding feeling as a parent. But then they mercilessly backstab me right in the heart. The next recording is different. Before he says anything my spidey-sense is going crazy; my son looks like crap, the room is all dark, and he sounds like he’s about to cry. My grandson is dead, and my family is left splintered.

So the dagger that was left in my heart was now being twisted and dug in deeper mercilessly once I really thought about it. People die all the time; that’s normal. However the fact that both Cooper and his son experienced the same situation in completely different ways due to time differentiation is what gnawed at my very soul. For his son, these events happened over a span of years. Yet, for Cooper they’re happening one after the other. Poor guy learns of his his newborn grandchild and see’s his beautiful happy family in one recording, then finds out he’s dead and the family left crushed in the next. In mere seconds Cooper and I went from the happiest father alive, to being utterly broken boys. Left powerless, there was nothing he could do about it but watch from the other end of the screen.

I really felt the pain of this scene. I felt like this was happening to my own son. Also since this story conflicts with some of my personal philosophy and morals, it had a huge impact. Once you make a commitment; especially to raise children, you are then obligated to protect and raise them for the rest of your life. It’s a huge responsibility, which is why it’s the perfect conflict for Cooper to struggle with because of the irony. In order to save his family, he has to leave them behind forcing them to fend for themselves. Cooper is devastated after watching these recordings; watching his legacy crashing down he feels responsible-like he made the wrong choice.