Interstellar - Must watch after a quick reading of Resnick Halliday

For the students who did not opt for Science during High School, understanding Interstellar could be a bit difficult, as for the others who did not take their Physics lessons seriously. I would recommend a 30 minute Google crash course on Relativity, Black Holes and Quantum Physics before heading for this one, because this is a movie that needs to be watched if you love sci-fi, since this could end up as one of the most creative movies in this genre.

Chrsitopher Nolan always has a grand vision and it is evident in the way the entire concept has been thought of. He has the capability of taking average movie goers out of their comfort zones and make them think and comprehend concepts they normally would not.

Somewhere in the future, there has been a "crop blight" that has reduced humanity to an existence where most people understand that the earth would soon be inhabitable, signaling the end of the human race. Among them is former astronaut, scientist and engineer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) who now leads the life of a farmer with his son, daughter and father-in-law. The daughter played admirably by Mackenzie Foy, regularly witnesses certain activities in the small library in her room and says that there is a ghost in there, which she is not afraid of, since the ghost seems to be telling her something. Initially Cooper does not take her seriously, but later realizes that that signals from the book shelves provide them some coordinates.

These coordinates lead them to a secret NASA location, with a much cut down workforce, headed by Professor Brand(Michael Caine), who is known to Cooper. Brand says that since the earth would end in a few decades, there have been missions to check other planets, where the human beings could survive. They have been guided by some "alien information" to a wormhole that takes them to these planets that orbit around a black hole. Three of these planets have been found to be potentially habitable as per signals received from astronauts that went there 10 years back. 

There is a Plan A where if a planet is actually habitable, Brand would send the entire remaining human race there, through giant space shuttles that would move through gravity, the theory for which he is working on through a complex equation involving quantum physics, gravity and the speed of light. In case Plan A does not succeed, since the equation is not solved, Plan B is to plant freezed human fetuses into the habitable planet, through surrogacy and ensure that the human race lives on.

Cooper agrees to be the pilot for the spaceship Endurance along with Brand's daughter Amelia, two robots TARS and CASE and two more scientists. They soon realize that there is a huge time dilation in these planets and a few days or even hours spent in these planets would mean many years on the earth, so they stand a chance of never being able to meet their loved ones again and worse get back to the earth when the human race is already finished, that is if they ever go back to the earth, braving the severe challenges that lay ahead. 

The rest of the movie is a gripping account of travel to these planets, through worm holes and then through a black hole fused with very real human emotions on the spacecraft and back on earth. Owing to time dilation, Cooper's daughter Murphy has grown up and become an excellent scientist and joined Brand at NASA, yearning for her father to return. The climax is especially unexpected and incredible and if one is able to understand, one would be "Physics-cally" overwhelmed. Ever imagined how a multi-dimensional space-time curve would look?

The best thing about Hollywood movies is they are not overwhelmed by a great sci-fi script, they pay equal attention to other aspects of film making, including acting and human emotions as well. The acting of the main characters is excellent, neither hyper not understated, exactly how it should be, in a dying planet, in a spacecraft and so on. The emotional bond between father and daughter, the camaraderie of the astronauts is also very well depicted. Even the characters of the witty robots CASE and TARS have been so well developed, that one feels bad when TARS has to sacrifice itself to reduce weight in the spaceship. It however connects to Cooper during the climax.

The special effects are excellent. All the scenes, the spacecraft, the scenes in outer space, inside a black hole or other planets look very real. Though they look similar to another excellent movie off late, Gravity. At times some of the concepts also sound similar to other movies I have watched in this genre. 

I felt the movie at 169 minutes running time, was a bit long for a Hollywood movie, however except a few scenes you would never feel that it has been unnecessarily stretched. If you really understand Relativity, Black Holes and Quantum mechanics, there could be many question asked. For example, we see time dilation, but why is there no mass defect at speeds of light? Or for that matter, even light cannot escape a black hole, can a space craft and human beings inside really survive?

However this much "cinematic liberty" has to be given, especially since this is a well-made movie otherwise.

I would strongly recommend watching, and give it 4 stars out of 5.