Tuesday 19 January 2016

Murphy's Law and the Power of Love- A Commentary on Interstellar

THE BEAUTIFUL POSTER 

PURE MASTERSTROKE-THE QUOTE


The Justification For This Blog

I had the opportunity to kill some time last night. and I ended up watching an arguable  masterpiece of a movie- Interstellar. While many have tried to understand the Science behind Interstellar, what caught my attention was the relationships between the protagonists- the father - daughter relation ship of Cooper &  Murphy and Dr Brand & Brand.

The Genesis of Conflict

Now Murphy is a troubled child- motherless and in constant conflict with her identity that she attributes to the infamous law of her namesake- Whatever Has To Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong. She loves her father, and in a difficult world on the brink of starvation, crop failures and imminent apocalypse, the last thing that she expects is a father who is on the verge of discarding farming, abandoning the family and heading into unknown space.

The Protagonists Coming in Terms

Meanwhile Cooper undertakes his journey with a steely resolve to explore the unknown and find finer pastures for the rest of humanity. Yet he yearns for taped messages from his daughter, what he gets is just the messages from his son instead. having lost a co flier in the quest for Miller's planet after the first inter galactic voyage, the crew has the choice to explore either Dr. Mann's Planet or Edmund's Planet. With logic supporting a journey for the previous ,I liked the part where Brand, his co traveller argues  in the complexity of 3D- 5D worlds that it is not space or time but love that transcends the various dimensions and hence her reasoning that they should head for the later planet instead. That led to Cooper actually seeing the greater common good and risking his own existence to unite Brand with Edmund. But landed up in a 5D maze as the Ghost pining to send the right signals for Murphy to discover her Eureka moment.

That struck me- this argument in support of love adds the philosophical touch to an otherwise oblique science fiction movie. 

The other important protagonist, Murphy never came in terms with the sense of abandonment, that was thrust unto her by her father. For years, she lived in the guilt of failing to tell her father to stay. it was only when she realised that his father had left without being aware that he would never return that she came into terms with the spirit of the Interstellar voyager. With her bitterness gone, she could finally make sense of the signals that her father had been communicating to her ever since she was a child. 

The Happy Ending. With happy endings being the norm,  the philosophy of love and hope takes centre stage at the climax again when Murphy exhorts her 124 years young father to go out in quest of Brand instead of being witness to the death of his child.

My Commentary. Readers who do not enjoy the proximity of their near and dear ones for a greater cause and the sense of duty would empathize with the difficulties of staying away from home. It is really difficult for any of our near and dear ones to get over the bitterness caused by such separations. Not everyone of us would be as lucky as Cooper or Murphy to be re united with a sense of hope and understanding. A few of us would indeed become sacrificial lambs in the first place, like Brand, who was handed over a one way ticket to the unknown by her own father and  ended up next on Edmund's planet due to the sudden change of heart of her co passenger- and thrust yet again into the unknown -all alone. Yet, undeniably, it is love that gives us the strength to stand up against all the forces of nature, the twisted irony of destiny and even the quantum physics of muliple dimensions. The  strength of love is far more powerful than any of the forces known or unknown to us. We derive courage, fortitude and perseverance due to the power of love. 

Endnote. To Love and be Loved is the Greatest Joy of Existence.


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