Written by Peter Grehan
Many good things have been said about Interstellar, but the
thing that struck me was how much I was reminded of other classics of science
fiction, in particular 2001, A Space Odyssey.
But first the film references another SF classic, the 1956
post-apocalyptic novel, The Death of Grass written by Samuel Youd under the pen
name John Christopher. In the novel a virus attacks and kills all forms of
grass, mutating to attack each in turn. With the staples, like wheat, rice, and
barley destroyed, society descends into anarchy as people become willing to do
almost anything to survive. A film version, No Blade of Grass (1970) presented
a very chilling account of how quickly civilised people can descend into
savagery when there are only a limited resources for survival. What brought this home to me more than
anything else wasn't the violence and breakdown of order, but the daughter of
the main protagonist choosing to dump her nice, respectable fiancé and take up
with an unsavoury and dangerous character because, as she puts it, “I feel
safer with him”. We are taken back to caveman values. The strongest, fiercest
males are those most desired by the females to produce offspring with the
greatest chance of survival.
The starting point for Interstellar, and motivator for
subsequent events is exactly such a blight, but this world is surprisingly
civilised, given that the main sources of food have been wiped out and the last
surviving crop, corn will soon follow. Even the armed forces have been
disbanded, when would expect, given human nature, that they would be fully
employed seizing and protecting what food resources were available. The society
of Interstellar is tolerant and gentle, even if it can’t see the value of
anything other than educating children to become farmers of an ever diminishing
range of crops and denying the Moon landing as a propaganda hoax (like the
Russians would have let the Americans get away with that!), presumably to
suppress any other science or engineering ambitions. In respect to the
continuation of civilised behaviour the film shares a fault with another post-apocalyptic American film, The Day After Tomorrow
(2004). After the cataclysmic and sudden shift in climate, not only do all the
American armed forces continue to function, but America and Europe's southern
neighbours generously welcome the refugees from the new Arctic wastes with open
arms. This seems like naive optimism at the very best. In No Blade of Grass soldiers
mutiny, killing their officers and turn into self-serving brigands. At the
least you would expect them to dessert and try to help their family and friends
in their home communities.
The film then moves on to echo the movie Contact (1997), based on
the novel
written by Carl
Sagan published in 1985, in which an advanced alien species
appears to be attempting contact sending messages. In Interstellar these are
sent via gravity variations and the creation of a wormhole that mysteriously
and conveniently opens in our solar system. This suggests a benevolent advanced
species helping humanity in its hour of need. The trouble with alien species is
that realistically they are virtually impossible to imagine. At each attempt we
tend to project ourselves onto them. Possibly the best alien of any science
fiction story is the sentient ocean on the planet Solaris from the novel of the same name by Stanisław Lem. The novel demonstrates human
science’s limitations in understanding the alien.
Most popular SF texts simply ignore this issue
by having humanoid aliens who think like us, more or less, and have pointy
ears, rubber suits or outer casings to define them as 'alien'. Films may try to
explain this similarity by suggesting that our own evolution was engineered by
some alien species, as in Prometheus
(2012). Even Star Trek: Next Generation
has attempted to justify its myriad humanoid aliens this way in an episode
called The Chase.
Science fiction text to make their aliens more scientific then have a bit of a
problem. What they tend to resort to is the unseen aliens. We see their
actions, effect and even their enigmatic tools, such as the monoliths from 2001 a Space Odyssey
(1968), effectively side stepping the whole impossible problem.
And talking of monoliths, Interstellar tips its hat to 2001
with a couple of nice touches. There are the robots that, at rest, are the
shape of a monolith. They are machines in the service of man as the monoliths
from 2001 were the machine servants of the unseen aliens. It is not the machine
that losses it's mind and becomes homicidal as in 2001, but the human, Doctor Zenn, rationalising murder with
irrational logic to save his own skin.
Finally, there is the descent into the black hole and arrival into the alien constructed environment that echoes the ending of 2001. If nothing else, Interstellar cannot be faulted for its sources of inspiration.
Finally, there is the descent into the black hole and arrival into the alien constructed environment that echoes the ending of 2001. If nothing else, Interstellar cannot be faulted for its sources of inspiration.
