Interstellar Isn't - and Is - About Religion [**Spoilers**]

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The movies that have the best chance of succeeding at the box office, if not among critics, are the ones that appeal to the widest possible audiences. A film that expressly deals with a religion, be it Christianity or any other, is rare because. . . It can be divisive.

The problem is, though, that religion offers rich terrain for cinematic exploration. It provides, on top of everything else, the same themes that have inspired artistic creators for centuries: mythology, memory, mysticism. So filmmakers have developed a canny way to talk about religion in movies without actually, you know, talking about it—allowing themselves to explore the biggest of life's questions and ideas while avoiding "Uncomfortable Conversations."

Their method involves a political safe space: space itself.

Space epics. . . concern themselves, almost by default, with metaphysics, questioning the how and the why and the what ifs of the world and the space beyond it. . . These films treat space not just as a spectacular setting for a story, but as a question to be answered. They deal with religion not just as a human institution, but also as something broader and more universal: a vehicle for human spirituality. . .

As Slate summed it up: "For the first time, Nolan’s universe has a God, or something like one."

That something is the "they," the mysterious creatures who communicate with Earth-bound humans, and who help to rescue humanity from a planet that has become, gradually and then suddenly, inhospitable. (Put another way: Salvation requires humans to have faith in the power—and the benevolence—of a being they can neither fully know nor fully understand.)

Interstellar's plot hinges, both intermittently and overall, on self-sacrifice, on characters willingly enduring death so that humanity as a whole might live. It hinges, even more explicitly, on the tentative promise of Cooper's return to Earth—what you might also refer to as a second coming. It features a chosen one (Cooper's daughter, Murph) and a chosen people: humanity as a species. There's a ponderous shot of Cooper, about to pilot his space-colonists into a wormhole, with his eyes closed and his hands folded in what is hard not to see as prayer. There is Hans Zimmer's booming soundtrack, the most prominent instrument of which is the organ of London's Temple Church. If you wanted to be Miltonian about it—Paradise Lost did take place in an interplanetary setting quite similar to Interstellar's—there's also a fallen angel in the person of Dr. Mann (yep, Dr. Mann), the brilliant scientist who, it is repeated several times, represented "the best of us" before he came to represent the worst.

There's also a lot of talk of good and evil. There's a lot of talk of faith. There's a lot of talk of love—love that is explicitly not romantic (Interstellar is as asexual a blockbuster as you'll find), but that is, in its best manifestation, selfless. . .

Interstellar, like so many space movies before it, has adopted the themes of religious inquiry. The scope of space as a setting—the story that takes place within the context of the universe itself, across dimensions—has allowed Nolan, like so many filmmakers before him, the permission of implication. . . As Stanley Kubrick once said of the film that is the most obvious antecedent to Nolan's:

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You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point.

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. . .

Space, speaking to us in its vast silence, brings out the philosopher in us all.

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