By Spencer Schneier, Staff Writer

Published in print Nov.12 ,2014

Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar premiered this past weekend, and it wowed audiences with beautiful shots of deep space, and a riveting plot that kept its viewers hooked.

The film is set in the near future, and the world has undergone a catastrophic environmental event that has created an agrarian society that can only grow corn. The protagonist, “Coop,” (Matthew Mcconaughey) is a former engineer and space pilot who has been relegated to the role of corn farming.

One of the more peculiar scenes is one in which Coop attends a parent-teacher conference at his daughter’s school, and they address an issue with her behavior in class. She had brought in a NASA book about the trip to the moon, and she believed that it had happened. The school showed concern at this, asserting the moon landing as propaganda to trick the Soviets into overspending on their space program.

The film explores elements of human nature, the place of humanity in the universe and the very idea of time and space.

Featuring many broad shots in which the spacecraft was almost hard to see, Interstellar makes a statement about where humans truly are in the grand scheme of the universe.  Not only in space, but even on distant planets, the humans are shot as a small part of the frame.

The film most powerfully explores the idea of curiosity, as Coop’s daughter Murph becomes fascinated with a ghost in her room, but she approaches it scientifically. Eventually it is revealed that this ghost is her father communicating to her through a warp in space-time, and because of Murph’s curiosity she eventually is able to understand what the ghost is.

It is through these elements that the film explores the insignificance of human existence on the macro level, but the beauty of it on the micro level. Curiosity, love and courage prevail over pettiness and complacency. At one point, early in the film, Coop’s father in law (John Lithgow) observes that when he was young, there seemed to be new ideas every day. It seemed to him that now humans were content to keep their heads down as subsistence beings.

Like many of Nolan’s films, Interstellar is very long, stretching to nearly three hours. While it could probably use an editor, the film still utilized many techniques and a wide range of ideas to dazzle and entertain.

One of the main storylines is Coop sending himself messages via a black hole that has allowed him to leave directions to himself so he can find NASA’s location (because NASA has become secret since the vague environmental apocalypse). This exploration of free will is an odd one, not centered on religious tones like many explorations of the sort usually are, but instead it focuses more on human perception and the dimensions of the universe.

Free will is explored even further by the plot line involving “Plan A and Plan B.” The former is a plan to save the Earth and all of the current living beings, and Plan B is to start a new human colony on a distant planet. It is eventually revealed that Plan A was predetermined to be impossible, and that the intent of NASA was to just start a new colony on a distant planet. Despite this apparent deterministic intent, the members of the crew are able to overcome this and through their will they effect events to allow both plans to succeed.

Like any Nolan film, it is complex (perhaps to the point of excess), but it is also riveting. One can’t help but express skepticism at many points, yet the audience is also captivated by the scenery and powerful themes.