One of the signs of growing older is that my imagination is
growing circumscribed by the past. My sense of possibility is growing
truncated. One antidote for me is watching a movie. Recently I saw the new movie Interstellar. I
am starting a collection of essays on faith and film. This one will definitely
be in consideration.
Science fiction gives directors permission to let their
imaginations fly: to create new worlds, to imagine the realm of the black hole,
to peer deeply into human nature. Christopher Nolan, the director does not
disappoint, as his palette is rich and full and opens up the viewer to new
worlds.
It is set in a familiar future, but the natural order is
spinning away, as blight threatens the food supply. To hold off destruction,
humanity has narrowed its vision into becoming caretakers, not explorers or
visionaries. It pushes the questions back to us. Have we become so chastened,
so disappointed, that we have lost our push to aspire for something large,
something great and noble? Can we face big questions-How much peril have we
left our precious globe? Will the planet be saved? Will the human race survive?
Should it?
Science fiction places great questions and possibilities
before me into a distant time and place. It creates a safe distance, a remove,
to consider our own concerns and issues. The writer and director are fond of
paired relationships. We get two poles of a father-daughter relationship, one
worshipful and one alienated, but both come from the deep bond of the
relationship itself.
Kip Thorne, the physicist who worked on the movie Contact,
is an executive producer. His fingerprints are on the movie in its
consideration of time at the edge of our grasp of it. From Einstein, most of us
now realize that time is not always a constant, but that it can change if one
approaches the speed of light. The script also points in a most human way. As time
passes memories fade and change. Parents provide the template of memory, not
the future, the past, for their children. In a way, parents are the ghosts of
time past for our children. We occupy their presence with our words and
actions. The quality of our interaction will check if those memories haunt them
or give them courage.
When the movie goes into space, the crew has a robot on
board. It has a humor program set into it. It has an honesty level programmed
into its circuits that can be adjusted. To what degree can we, should we adjust
our settings, depending on circumstance? The robot is even willing to sacrifice
its own existence for the mission and the pursuit of knowledge. In the New
Testament, we call that the very definition of love in some instances.
As they struggle to grasp shifts in time, space, and
gravity, the characters face that particular element of humanity, love. One
character says that love is the force we know that can transcend space and
time. She goes on to say that we love those who have gone on before us in death.
What social utility does such a force present?
Finally, the question is raised: is it enough for us to
merely survive, or shall we flourish? One day at a time works when the future
seems threatening. If the future seem brighter, we may well aspire toward
better days. A character repeats the famous line of Dylan Thomas: rage against
the dying of the light. It applies to death, but it could also apply tour
acceptance of a half-lived life of foreshortened expectations and goals and
hopes. Imagining a new and better future gives us the energy to change in the
here and now.
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