Interstellar Essay Questions

Dr. Mann is one of Interstellar’s most complex and tragic characters. Describe his role in the story and what he comes to represent.

One of the great ironies of Interstellar is that the scientist touted as the most remarkable, the “best” of those who sought out hope for humanity’s survival, ultimately becomes an example of the great human capacity for selfishness and betrayal. Dr. Mann was not likely an antagonist before his time alone on his planet, but the stark conditions and knowledge that he would die there poisoned his mind, turning him into a manipulator obsessed with self-preservation. He even acknowledges his own cowardice when Cooper accuses him of it. That his name is literally Mann is a nod to the fact that his fate could’ve potentially been any human’s. And, of course, the truth that he was a traitor ties directly back to Cooper and Brand’s earlier conversation about the evil that mankind brings into an otherwise amoral universe. Brand acknowledges that nature is formidable and dangerous without being intentionally malicious, but that humans can be such. Unintentionally, she foreshadows Mann’s role as the human who brought selfishness and malice to an otherwise indifferent galaxy.

Cooper’s relationship to Murph is a crucial element of Interstellar’s plot. Describe how their connection, both its the positive and negative elements, drives the story.

Cooper has a powerful influence on Murph as a child. From his suggesting that she think scientifically about her broken space lander toy, to allowing her to land the drone with his laptop, Cooper encourages her to engage with the world around her and figure out “the how and the why” of things. Their close bond is a critical reason why his departure is so intensely painful for Murph: she sees it as a terrible betrayal, one that will cause her to resent her father and refuse to talk to him for almost the rest of her life. Nolan therefore had the task of making Cooper’s goodbye a turning point for Murph: her heartbreak needed to become a defining aspect of her motivations to pursue the problem of gravity. Establishing the power of that love from the get-go was therefore crucial. And, of course, the love they share needed to become the force that “transcends time and space” like gravity, allowing Cooper to communicate with her through the tesseract to help her solve the gravity equation and save mankind.

Explore Romilly’s role in the film. How does he dramatize the plot and increase its stakes? What does his death represent?

Romilly is arguably the film’s most sympathetic and tragic character. He displays an uneasiness about the spinning of the Endurance and the thin walls that separate him from outer space, a sign of his vulnerability. Yet he also demonstrates incredible bravery and resilience: his decision to stay behind on the Endurance while his team visits Miller’s planet raises the stakes of their journey considerably, because had they all gone down together, they would have experienced the same time slippage and returned in more or less the same condition (assuming, of course, that Romilly didn’t perish like Doyle). Instead, their mistakes have a greater impact because they mean a longer, more tortuous solitude for Romilly as he waits for them to return. He becomes more fragile and time-worn while they’re away. Still, despite the years of crippling solitude, when his friends return, he’s once again able to focus on the mission, a testament to his dedication and strength.

Romilly’s death at the hand of Mann’s booby trap is a quick but tragic loss. It’s an emotional shock to say the least, and an example of the cruel consequences of Dr. Mann’s selfishness. As a character, Romilly represented the bravest of humanity, someone who puts his mission first and his psyche second. His death, though, tells us the hard truth that that these efforts, while not in vain, don’t guarantee survival.

Describe the role of sound in Interstellar, including how noise within the story interacts with the soundtrack. Where do we hear noise and where is it absent? Why?

Nolan employs a recurring aural motif in Interstellar: for any shot that occurs from the void of space, there is no diegetic sound (sound that exists within the world of the film) is removed, as would be the case in real life. This helps to ground the audience in reality; when we’re in space, we experience it as silently as real astronauts would. The Endurance’s retro-boosters, the docking of the Ranger with the Endurance, even the explosion Mann causes aboard the station later in the movie—all of these exciting moments happen silently.

The exception to this, of course, is Hans Zimmer’s epic, organ-heavy score, which keeps the audience engaged in the drama and provides some continuity as we switch between silent external shots and sound-heavy ones inside the space crafts. Christopher Nolan approached Zimmer about Interstellar's soundtrack with the idea that conventional orchestrations, such as those that feature strings or drums, were off the table. Instead, epic organ is prominently featured throughout the film, beginning with the first crescendoing chord as Cooper gets up and looks out over the field of corn outside his window. This music often even overpowers the actors' onscreen dialogue, an intentional choice on Nolan's part to overwhelm the audience with drama and make them feel as starved for clarity as the astronauts in the story often feel.

Many of the strange events involving Murph's "ghost" are explained once Cooper reaches the tesseract. Explore how Nolan carefully built up to the revelation that Cooper was the ghost all along, citing specific examples of scenes from the film.

Interstellar's entire story hinges on the fact that Cooper goes back in time via the tesseract to interact with himself and Murph through her bookshelf. The imagery and events that lead up to this revelation are present from the opening scene, in which we see dust falling across the bookshelf as the title comes on screen. Both unnaturally falling dust and the bookshelf itself become key plot points, so Nolan chooses to introduce them from the get-go. Then, each of the scenes that feature Murph's bookcase acting strangely are lined up to correspond with an action of Cooper's in the tesseract in the film's climax, from when he breaks her toy space lander to when she discovers the word STAY spelled out in Morse code. These scenes introduce an unusual occurrence, leave it unexplained, and then allow Nolan to tie up each loose end one at a time later. The coordinates in the dust, the book that falls as Cooper's saying goodbye to Murph—all of these are brought back from Cooper's point of view to clarify why they happened and how they build up to the paradox of him going back in time to create them.