By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Is there a Jewish view of the new movie Interstellar and the themes that director Christopher Nolan tapped into? I’m not a movie critic, and I’m not a rabbi, but here’s my take on the film from afar.
“Interstellar” is fine work of movie-making and Mr. Nolan is at the top of his game here as a director. I enjoyed watching the movie, deeply, and was deeply touched by the story and the visuals as a longtime movie fan who loves sitting in a darkened theater watching dreams unfold at 24 frames a second.
My film heroes are Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and Steven Spielberg and Ingmar Bergman. So that dates me.
But this needs to be said: While Interstellar searches deep space, it has also revealed deep divisions on Earth. About climate change and global warming. And that is all we should be talking about now. Enough with all all these distractions in a very distracted world! The time to focus on global warming solutions is now, and not just in America, but worldwide as well.
Did you notice that Interstellar was a sci-fi cli-fi movie only about America, with only Americans going into space and only an American flag being planted on some faraway planets? Nolan made the movie as if the rest of the world does not exist, and no other nations were invited on his space adventure.
So when film critic Noah Gittell published a freelance story in the Atlantic the other day headlined “Interstellar: Good Space Film, Bad Climate-Change Parable,” it elicited over 200 comments in the ”after-article” space, and all the divisions that Interstellar brought forth came out, or at least 200 of them.
Gittell wrote a very perceptive piece and his words were telling:”There is already plenty of evidence of America’s alarming inability to reckon with climate change, but perhaps none is more surprising than this: Even Hollywood doesn’t get it.”
And: “The entertainment industry is rightly thought of as a haven for [liberal] progressive thought, but in the last few years, while it has made big-budget blockbusters…it has yet to adequately address the issue of climate change. Of course, neither has any government in the world, and maybe for the same reason: When faced with unpleasant realities, we all prefer a fantasy.”
No matter matter how one feels about Interstellar as a piece of Hollywood entertainment, one thing should be agreed upon, Gittell opined: “As a climate-change parable, it fails.”
Nolan could have made a cli fi movie, but no, he didn’t want to go down that road. So what we got was an “event” movie, preceded by plenty of pre-opening PR and hype, with over 100 news articles published before the movie even opened, and the studio PR people know very well how to market such “event” movies.
Especially when the boat is being skippered by a stellar, superstar director like Nolan.
But Nolan could have made the movie’s message much more relevant to the present day issues of climate change and global warming. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Didn’t.
Ask around: many climate activists, from Bill McKibben to Joe Romm, and hundreds of others across the globe, felt that Interstellar was a missed opportunity.
As the Atlantic headline made clear: ”Good Space Film, Bad Climate-Change Parable.”
Interstellar searched deep space and found deep divisions on Earth among climate activists and climate denialists. As a movie, the film can be debated forever and ever, tweaked this way and that, and all points of view are interesting and entertaining. For sci fi geeks, the film is a milestone and the fallout will last for decades. This was an “event” movie that will endure for a 100 years.
But Hollywood is slowly getting the message, that cli fi movies also can make an impact and bring in audiences — and even make some money at the same time. From this year’s Into the Storm and Snowpiercer, cli fi movies have rocketed to sky-high levels. Jake Paltrow’s Young Ones and Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, set not in the distant interstellar future but in the great intertribal long ago.
So climate awareness is coming to Hollywood, and more and more cli fi movies will get greenlighted I believe (with ”green” used here in both senses of the word: money and climate change) as time goes by.
So to Noah Gittell’s question — why isn’t Hollywood making good movies about climate issues and global warming — well, it is getting its act together and the next 80 years will see a golden era of cli fi movie projects greenlighted and released by major Hollywood studios and independents, too. Cli fi has arrived. It took some doing, It took some time. It took some arm-twisting. It took some PR appeals and media spotlights. But yes, cli fi is here and it will make a huge difference in Hollywood over the next century of movie making.
Watch when Hollywood makes and releases powerful cli fi movies based on novels by Liz Jensen and Barbara Kingsolver and Nathaniel Rich and Margaret Atwood. Ian McEwan and Jim Laughter, too. Cli fi novels can lead to cli fi movie adaptations.
”Without a vision, the people perish.” That Jewish proverb still remain prophetic.
Interstellar, Intershtellar. We need to ”repair the world” here on Earth, first.
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Bloom, based in Taiwan, is an inveterate web surfer and a climate activist. He may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com
While I agree with your thoughts – and those expressed in the “Atlantic” article – I can’t help but offer the following caveat. Despite millennia of “practice”, we humans seem to be increasingly incapable of solving anything that doesn’t involved unintended consequences and collateral damage – both of which can cause catastrophic results to the human beings negatively impacted. Some of us are old enough to remember when people seemed to exercise a certain amount of ingenuity and flexibility to “bend the rules” to resolve at least some problems caused by poorly thought out protocols and procedures. In the past eighteen months dealing with my dying husbands needs and the horrific aftermath of his death, I can attest to the fact that this is no longer true. The details of my personal saga are completely unbelievable, but last night’s episode of NCIS offered a beautiful illustration. A former Navy medical corpsman was facing significant jail time for offering aid to accident victims, saving two lives in the process. She had significant field experience and had received identical training to Army and Air Force personnel. Legally, they are allowed to help – she was not. We’ve created a world where “the rules are more important than the relationships” – “the rules” even trump desirable outcomes. In the wake of Robin Williams’ suicide, it was noted that there has been an increase of 30% in suicide among those over 60 – in just the past ten years. A noted “expert” in the field decrying this epidemic offered the following solution: “More and better mental health care programs” I think most of us in that age group are just plain exhausted from engaging in daily battles where both sides agree that the policies/procedures/protocols and rules make no sense in specific circumstances and produce negative consequences – but have to be followed anyway. The results of our wars on poverty, drugs and war itself have apparently produced results in the opposite direction. I shudder to think what a mess we would make of the planet by using our current mindset to engage in a battle against climate change.