Its not difficult to imagine a future where our world is slowly dying, for all of the greatness achieved by humanity it hasn’t gone hand in hand with our planets life. We keep hurting the planet that makes life possible for us, depleting its natural resources and wreaking the protection it has. Interstellar a movie by the phenomenal Christopher Nolan which lets peek in the future which would be unavoidable if changes aren’t made. It speaks about a world that has become near inhabitable, blights make it difficult for the crops to survive and massive dust storms threaten humanity. Chances of humanities survival seem dire but the flame hasn’t died yet.

The movie follows the path taken by the best of humanity, there are 2 theorised paths, path A where gravitational propulsion must be developed to send entire settlements to space, path B involves traversing a wormhole that appeared near Saturn and has possibility of 12 habitable planets. To ensure humanities survival a ship known as the Endurance carrying 5000 cryogenically frozen embryos is to be piloted through the wormhole onto a habitable planet. Before sending the Endurance into the wormhole small scale tests were done where volunteer astronauts went to these planets to survey the living conditions, this was referred to as project Lazarus.

The Endurance requires a pilot to complete its crew, Joseph Cooper an ex NASA pilot played by Matthew McConaughey is selected as the pilot. When they venture into the wormhole they begin searching for signals left by the members of the Lazarus Project. They come across a few signals and the closest one seems to coming from a ocean world, a splinter crew descends to the planets surface to recover Miller the astronaut sent to initially survey the planet and confirm the suitability of the planet. After descending to the surface they discover the planet to be uninhabitable due to being plagued by gigantic waves cause by the planets proximity to a blackhole.

After losing time and a crew member they decide to check up one of two remaining beacons, one from Edmunds and another from Mann. Mann’s report seem to be more positive so its decided to visit his planet. Mann played by Matt Damon is however revealed to have faked the reports, he does so to be rescued from the planet which is actually a frigid wasteland and incapable of being the replacement humanity desperately desires. Mann fails an escape attempt killing and damages the Endurance, Cooper manages to pilot the damaged but functioning Endurance to try and reach Edmund’s planet the last hope for humanity. A depleting fuel reserve forces cooper to use the blackholes gravity well to propel the Endurance forward. To reduce weight and to provide a final push to the Endurance cooper decides to separate himself from the craft entering the blackhole in the process.

This movie not only talks about dying earth but manages to satisfy every science fiction enthusiast by depicting time dilation. Time dilation refers to phenomenon of time passing differently depending on either the gravity or the velocity of an object. A popular theory which says time is about all about perspective, for a ship orbiting a black hole what would count as mere minutes may be months or even years for a person on the nearest planet. This difference in the rate at which time passes is generally attributed to the distance said object is from a strong gravitational pull, in the case of a black hole distance from the event horizon being the defining factor.

I’ll recommend this movie to any science fiction enthusiast fascinated with time and space. The visual effects are amazing and most of the physics is spot on. A must watch for anyone that is familiar with Nolan’s work, he never fails to impress even the toughest critic. The movie also serves as a watch glass into our own future if changes are not made soon.