Astonishingly Good

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2014)

This movie blew my socks off. From the very beginning to the very end, I don't think I felt a second of boredom. The movie had you captivated the whole way.
What I really found great, and surprising, was how philosophically deep this movie was. The two central themes I made out were determinism and survival - represented by Matt Damons "Dr. Mann" and Michael Cains "Dr. Brand", and love, represented at different times by Dr. Brands daughter, Anne Hathaway and the central character, Cooper, played by Matthew Mcconoghey.
From the very get-go this dichotomy is intimated by Cooper (mcconoghey) relationship with his daughter Murph. From how he brings his children everywhere with him to his compassionately overlooking his daughters deceptions to come along on potentially dangerous missions, Cooper is an intelligent man, very well educated, a fighter pilot - as well as an engineer - but nevertheless, it is love and his commitment to his children that we see from these first scenes in the movie.
This movie is BIG. Although the science is absolutely implausible (from the assumption that humans could survive an interstellar space mission; to putting the human body into stasis as if muscle cells and neurons didn't depend on continuous excitation to survive) but that was easy to overlook with the grandiosity of the space ship and set design. You're pulled in; you WANT to believe that this is possible, so you go along with it.
As said before, the profundity of this movies message is what got me. It became clearer with Dr. Mann (damons) admission that he forged the data about his planet; that his planet had zero viability for survival. He had went to the wrong one and - evidently - was insanely bent on getting back to the twirling spaceship without mcconoghey and Hatheway.
During this entire scene, Damons character tries to justify to himself what he's done. As Cooper struggles to breathe, Dr. Mann asks him "do you see your children?" assuming that everything which governs human nature is solely a manifestation of 'the urge to survive'. Instead of treating his relationship with his children as built on something more profound and enigmatic - the pull of love - Dr. Mann sees it as contemporary selfish gene theorists believe: it's all just 'survival' instinct. His children - what they mean to him - are just there, popping up into his head, so that his genes will get his body and mind motivated to survive.
Earlier on, before Dr. Manns planet was selected by a 'rigorous' vote between the 3 remaining astronauts, Hatheways character argues that something else is motivating her; she can't explain what, but she feels a pull - what she describes as love - drawing her to believe that they need to go to the planet where her former lover is assumed to be. Cooper argues that "love" is not scientifically defensible; while Hatheway develops a theory that maybe love is the transcendent core of reality; an enveloping dimension that governs the lower planes of space and time; and that our experience of it, which defies all that is known about basic laws and principles, draws the universe into unity.
Eventually, were brought to a bifurcation point; Hatheways character takes the spaceship to the remaining planet, while Mcconoghey (cooper) decides on passing through a black hole to see whats on the other side. What he discovers is nothing short of mindblowing: instead of being blown to smithereens, Cooper is sent into a 5th dimensional realm; finding himself within it, he sees endless bookcases in an infinite hallway. He soon learns that this is a 'higher' perspective into the ordinary 3 dimensional reality of his earlier life. Looking back through time, he sees into his daughters room and sees that what she thought was a "ghost" before, was in fact him trying to communicate with her. The words 'STAY' which his daughter insisted was what the ghost was communicating with her, was him, trying to convince his earlier self to STAY; to not leave his daughter and humanity to certain death by asphyxiation. As he pushes down the hallway of his 5th dimensional personal perspective upon his earlier life, both he and his daughter (chastain at this point) discover a way to communicate; Mcconoghey insight that gravity defies time has given him the knowledge that humanity needs to survive; likewise, grown up Murph intuits that the ghost was her father, and the watch he gave her, and it's weird movements, are a type of code she needs to interpret.
By the end of the movie, we find Hatheway on a luscious alive planet and Mcconoghey wakes up in a hospital on a floating spaceship world just outside of Saturn (and close to the wormhole). He succeeded in guiding his daughter to the knowledge that mankind needed to survive; and Hatheways characters intuition - based upon love - was also correct.
By the end of the movie we learn that time and space - and our indvidualized, atomized bodies - are united in a 5th dimensional 'superbeing' - mankind themselves; and above this, as Hatheway's character learned, is the guiding presence of love.