Inception was a thriller of the mind. Interstellar is a meditation on space and the spaces in the heart. It bridges the infinite to the intimate, parting to yearning, belief to discovery. Even as it weaves intricate science into it's narrative, it deconstructs the part love plays in science. And how faith and care will always be the unnamed dimension in any scientific equation.
And since the film is a meditation, it eases it's way into our consciousness in soft grace and hard heartbreak. As the astronauts search for new places to inhabit people dying in an increasingly unhabitable earth - they realize how the loved ones inhabiting their hearts are ageing faster than them. Some of the most aching scenes in this film full of aching grandeur are of father and daughter parting, of a father listening to the messages sent by his children and seeing how they have grown and changed even as he remains almost un-aged, of a father again meeting his daughter in unimaginable circumstances.
The film has a sepulchral feel to it. Even it's villainy has a sad nobility, a greater purpose. The vistas - a raging spatial sea, a stark glacial landscape, the lights of a black hole - are so stunning that it requires an effort to absorb all of it in our senses. But they are there for human drive, dream and desire to be tested, to force them to go beyond, so that they can return to what is within.
It is an ageless pursuit. And dwarfs all discoveries of science.
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