A spiritual experience.

Rating: 10/10 (29 November 2014)

Interstellar is not a movie for the close-minded.
Enter, and seek to understand our scale and purpose in this universe.
As humans in Interstellar seek out new hope after badly damaging Earth, our protagonists begin to be visited by a strange presence only known as "they". These beings leave various breadcrumbs which propel our characters on their journey through a wormhole to alien worlds. Understanding who "they" are is key to understanding our purpose in life.
Many emotional dilemmas are presented in this film, often revolving around the search for love and the impossibility of leaving our past lives behind.
My girlfriend and I felt Interstellar helped awaken us to the connectedness of past, present, and each other, and how this relates to the meaning of life. I had a hard time keeping it together through many scenes, as McConaughey (Cooper) and the rest of the crew complete feats of incredible bravery and humanity. The physical boundaries of our universe are pushed as our crew must decide if it's better to trust decision making based on love or evidence.
If time can fold upon itself, as suggested by relatively, we are more connected to the rest of the universe than we realize. Nolan suggests this in terms of advanced beings able to experience time as a canyon, and gravity as a mountain. Time, gravity, and other dimensions are all just a matter of how they are measured and perceived. If the theories of relativity are true - why would it not be possible to be we are visited by beings able to manipulate time and gravity? Who are we to say it's not possible?
For humans, after life itself, we are born seek out love and our place in the world. Interstellar beautifully shows that our innate energy will always seek to be recycled, and that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. We will always touch the world in ways far beyond the physical, even if we don't know it.
Almost destroying all hope entirely, Matt Damon's character did an excellent job showing the destructiveness that comes from Man's fear of death. Another misstep by the crew seems to represent our tendency to waste so much of our lives searching for answers in the wrong places (or on the wrong planets, in this case).
I felt Nolan did an excellent job juxtaposing the unhealthy, fearful, and destructive way of thinking common among us with a "more enlightened way" the crew discovers, the themes of which bear for me a close similarity to Taoish teachings - that the the universe is bound by various powerful, yet indefinable forces, and that life itself is the greatest possession we can have.
The graphics, acting, and script were amazing. The film reminds us that we understand very little about our physical world, and that when thinking in infinite terms, anything is possible - yet, our human purpose remains clear - to find love, community, and at the end of the day, return home.