WARNING:SPOILERS WITHIN Just saw Interstellar, the new Chris Nolan blockbuster. To be honest, while i enjoy setting movies, rarely do i see one that is memorable, let alone resonates in my consciousness beyond the theatre. Some I've seen lately have been enjoyable time killers like the visual tour de force that is the last planet of the apes flick or which had me cheering on my lifelong love of giant city destroying monsters like the last American Godzilla and aren't really worth any discussion. Interstellar,while being somewhat weak in the story department, introduces some ideas about space, time, humanity and higher love, wrapping them up in a decent plot and dressing them in great SPFX to make it palatable to the wide public. Hopefully, the concepts presented will make people think, not just scratch their head.
It begins with clips of what i took to be survivors of the very real dustbowl of the early twentieth century America, to let us know that it has and can happen again. Then we're introduced to the dustbowl of the film, an earth where the fears of war, the anxiety of borders and the lust for high technology has been put aside in favor of finding ways to produce food. Blight has consumed most crops, except corn and,according to one of the characters, is putting too much nitrogen in the atmosphere. Within a couple generations, humanity will perish, eventually even those able to access food will be unable to access air. We're all doomed. Children are not being educated in the sciences but rather into farming using propagandist anti science methods.
BEWARE; SPOILERS!! MINIMAL, BUT STILL, SPOILER ALERT! Through a plot contrivance, the main character, a ex Air Force pilot with PTSD and his science driven daughter discover an outpost of NASA,which was driven underground because of the agencies uselessness and reluctance to drop nuclear bombs (don't ask why NASA would be involved or extant at all... WSoD)as population control. Upon discovery of his background, for some reason he us recruited in their new mission-to send people into a newly discovered (as well as intelligently constructed)wormhole near Saturn that will propel a small crew into another galaxy. 12 astronauts have already gone, to explore the new worlds now accessible to send back information as to which one(s) could become the new earth.
Upon traveling through the wormhole our heroes, along with a sarcastic metal box capable of physically rearranging itself into various useful configurations, explore several new worlds, orbiting and receiving energy from of all things, a black hole. Yes, a black hole sun! Along the way,we're introduced to the high concepts of the film. The second half of the film strings these ideas together and visually represents things like higher dimensional reality in a way that I've never seen before, outside of hyperspace.
SPOILER!SPOILER!SPOILER! We're told that the wormhole that brought the heroes to the black hole system was constructed by a highly evolved species able to manipulate space time that is interested in the survival of humanity for some reason. The wormhole sequence had me gasping in recognition, I had seen this before and been there before. I guess Chris Nolan or his special effects team have a stash of 5meo DMT, or have pet river toads, the sequence nearly perfectly illustrated the 'tunnel' from three dimensional reality into hyperspace that connects us with the void. At the end of the movie, our hero propels himself sans spacecraft directly into the black hole and encounters another construction of the higher dimensional beings. A three dimensional configuration of a 5 dimensional reality, in other words time become material. Through this mechanism he is able to communicate back in time to his daughter back on earth, in give her the message which will save humanity.
We are told that there are only a few things which are able to cross dimensions, gravity, which can connect them; this concept is the basis for things like wormhole black holes,and time, which while plastic, is still constant can exert influence across dimensions. And there is one more concept which can exert influence across dimensions. Love. As in higher love, God's love, the love of creation. One of our characters travels across the universe in attempt to reunite with her lover, one of the 12 original astronauts sent through the wormhole. And in the end, it is love, the love our main character has for his daughter left behind on a dying earth that saves not the world, but humanity.
The concepts presented here are extremely psychedelic and are a film representation of what I feel the message from hyperspace is. As the main character states in the film at one point ''humans were born on earth but we weren't meant to die on it''. The propulsion of human consciousness into space, the saving of our planet by leaving it behind,is probably the one unambiguous message I got from my deepest travels into hyperspace.
This film presents things like constructs in higher dimensions made by intelligence, and even without saying it, God in a manner that is not mystical,spiritual or religious. Instead it presents these things as being the provenance and domain of humanity. I think any of us interested in these things and any tourist to hyperspace would enjoy this flick. The only thing I'm scratching my head over is how a piece of consumer culture could help me to understand the DMT experience little better. What the hell, are we evolving or something?
Sine experientia nihil sufficienter sciri potest -Roger Bacon
*γνῶθι σεαυτόν*