In this section of PFW Outreach, you will find a compilation of film reviews, focused on popular productions -and others not so much- that stand out for the aesthetics of the cinematographic image and the scientific or philosophical content of their scripts.

THE BEST SCI-FI MOVIE EVER

Photograph: Allstar/Legendary Pictures

The first time I saw Interstellar, I thought I had contemplated a sci-fi masterpiece. I am still thinking the same. Let me explain it with five arguments, focusing on its production and developments.

1. The physicist

If we study sci-fi history films, we will run into productions such as 'Metropolis,' 'Blade Runner,' '2001: A Space Odyssey', 'Solaris,' and 'Contact.' These are unforgettable pieces of art because they captured the attention not only of films' critics but scientists, and that is justified for the accurate science put on the scripts of these productions, or due to their revolutionary proposals, like time travel, parallel universes or play with the meaning of life.

During the XXI century, a large list of films with these characteristics didn't exist until we came to Interstellar.

The cinema project started, partially, inside Kip Thorne's brain, an expert in gravitational waves and Nobel laureate. Thorne wrote a draft based on a proposal from Lynda Obst, a Thorne's close friend. The project included black holes, time travel, gravitational waves, and even monsters moving around in different dimensions. The main aim was clear: write a story with accurate science, transform it into a film script, and sign a contract with a prestigious Hollywood corporation to make a dream come true. But even better: they wanted to share a space opera without violating any established laws of physics. The reason? To inspire the audience, especially teenagers, to study science careers.

2. The script

The dream went through highs and lows for years. After all, even if you are a named physicist, to get that your story calls the attention of Warner Bros or Century Fox is not an easy task. Fortunately for Thorne, his close friend, Lynda, rubbed her shoulders with elite American filmmakers. And they met with the one and only Steven Spielberg.

After their meeting, they organized a workshop in Caltech with fourteen scientists giving their ideas to perfect the story. I don't know of any other story that has been written with this level of complexity and brainstorming in the entire film history.

The team hired Johnathan Nolan to write the script, but in 2009 he couldn't continue to work for several reasons. And in 2010, they lost Steven Spielberg for budgets and administrative issues.

Nevertheless, when the dream seemed to sink, Lynda got Christopher Nolan, Johnathan's brother, to write the final script and direct the project.

And after a legal negotiation with successful results, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. pictures entered into a distribution contract, and the project was saved.

3. The Science

Science is the heart of the Interstellar project. Nolan hired a company called "Double Negative" to be in charge of visual effects. Thorne and the Visual effects team worked together and generated IMAX images for the film, including the famous black hole image that we can see at the end of the movie. Those images were so accurate that Thorne and other physicists used them in scientific investigations.

4. Cinematography

Christopher Nolan is well known for working with IMAX technology, which is very expensive and not recommended in closed places. That's why if you see the IMAX version released in blue-ray, you will notice that the movie combines two different ratios.

Like Stanley Kubrick did in the 60' to produce 2001, Nolan carried out the project with the most cutting-edge technology of our era. And that is reflected in results.

5. Music

Like always, Nolan hired Hans Zimmer to create the original motion picture soundtrack. Zimmer used different resources to tell the exact story with music, using analogies with a wide specter of instruments and technics, from an old organ located in a church to a wall sound, this one consist of a musical formula that combines a lot of instruments creating a densely sound; it was incorporated to planet Miller scene, where we can see a huge tsunami.

One of the most accurate of Zimmer's analogies was the sound of time, using tic tac's sounds of a watch, increasing the speed as the melody progressed, especially in a theme called 'Mountains'. Time is significant in Interstellar because the script describes characters suffering due to relativistic laws. In simple terms: the greater the mass, the greater the temporal-space deformation, and the slower a system moves.

From a Hollywood producer idea to a story polished with accurate physics thanks to a Nobel laureate scientist, written carefully with more than five years of drafting, recording with high-technology, and musicalized by a genius film score composer, Interstellar has become a sci-fi movie to a masterpiece of our era. And it is here to S.T.A.Y.