“The Promised Land” - Andrzej Wajda (1975)

The Promised Land (Ziemia Obiecana, 1975) is Andrzej Wajda’s epic film about rampant industrialization in the Polish city of Lodz at the end of the 19th century. The story is Wajda’s adaptation of the famous novel of the same name by Stanislaw Wladyslaw Reyment, who won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924. It concerns the experiences of three young men who bond together in order to fulfil their dreams of becoming rich in the burgeoning Polish textile industry in Lodz at that time. The film has an eerie, expressionistic quality that goes beyond the specific plot elements and is difficult to describe; but it is this moody aspect that makes the film truly memorable.

In some sense you might call The Promised Land the Polish version of Gone With the Wind (1939), since the film has a sweeping quality that serves to capture the aura and perspective of an entire era.      The three principal male characters – a Pole, a German, and a Jew – cover three major cultural components of Polish society:

• Karol Borowiecki (played by Daniel Olbrychski) is an ambitious and aristocratic young Pole whose family wealth has declined but whose social standing remains high.
• Moryc (Moritz) Welt (played by Wojciech Pszoniak) is a young Jewish financial wheeler-dealer with social connections to the Jewish financial sector.
• Maks (Max) Baum (played by Andrzej Seweryn) is the son of a German textile mill owner whose inclusive attitude toward his workers in this ruthless era has spelled his family’s economic decline.

Like many young men, all three of these guys are on the make, and are eager to make their fortunes and become fabulously successful. But there personal qualities differ somewhat. Karol is polished and mild-mannered, but utterly selfish. Moryc is ebullient and good-natured, but he is seduced by the opportunities and excitement of market transactions that can make a person rich very quickly. Maks is also narcissistic, but more human and more interested in having a good time than in accumulating power. Because Karol is the floor manager of an existing Lodz textile mill (owned by the callously brutal German businessman, Bucholz), the united goal of the three comrades is to acquire enough funds to build a factory of their own that can then be managed by Karol.  So much of the action centers around Karol’s activities.

Although the Karol character strikes me as particularly repellent, there are three women in the story who are enamored of the young man and want to marry him.

• Anka (Anna Nehrebecka), Karol’s fiancé, is a beautiful, compassionate, and loving woman whose devotion to Karol prevents her from responding to Maks’s romantic intentions.
• Lucy Zucker (Kalina Jedrusik) is the voluptuous wife of a Jewish financier. Although she genuinely loves Karol, her social situation rules out any long-term possibilities from the perspective of the self-centered Karol.
• Mada Müller (Bozena Dykiel) is the gawky and graceless daughter of a crude but fabulously wealthy German businessman. 

To the viewer it is obvious that Karol should be faithful to the charming and almost angelic Anka, but Karol’s appetites direct him elsewhere.

As the story unwinds, we follow the three young men in their quest for enough money to build their factory. Karol’s affair with Lucy Zucker accidentally leads to the discovery of a vital secret: the government intends to increase the import tariff for cotton in the coming weeks. Karol passes this news on to Moryc, who makes a killing in the commodities market; and, together with some additional financial finagling by Moryc, they manage to scrape together the money needed to build their factory.

On the day of the factory’s opening, however, Lucy Zucker’s jealous husband confronts Karol about their affair and whether he is responsible for her current pregnant condition. Although Karol deceitfully swears his innocence before a sacred Catholic relic, this buys him only temporary reprieve from revenge. Eventually Zucker learns the truth about their affair and has Karol’s uninsured factory burned to the ground. So the three young investors end up where they started: virtually penniless.

Almost as a coda to the film, the scene now shifts forward some four or five years.  Karol has married Mada Müller for her money and is now a wealthy factory owner as he had dreamed.  Moryc and Maks seem to be working for him as assistants.  Faced with a massive labor strike, Karol tells his compatriots in the final shot of the film that he has no choice but to have his armed guards open fire on the assembled protestors.

Now one could take this whole story of unrelenting greed as just a lengthy tirade against the evils of capitalism, and many have done so. Karol, Maks, and Moryc are all self-indulgent power-seekers who believe money is the answer to their dreams, while the working class is shown to be struggling under insufferable working and living conditions. But to me the film has a power that elevates it above such a straightforward political message. Wajda’s cinematography gives this story a nightmarish quality that goes well beyond the structural elements of the plot [1]. 

The incessant use of wide-angle lens shots, often with low-angle camera perspectives, gives the entire depicted world a garish aspect that conspicuously conflicts with the optimistic attitudes of the three young men.  In the first shots we see the crippled and hateful Bucholz (Andrzej Szalawski) reciting the Lord’s Prayer in his opulent mansion, while scrawny and filthy workers outside are struggling to survive.  Indeed, what is shown has the feeling of a ghoulish world from a carnival house of horrors.  From the very beginning we are shown ominous scenes of workers struggling in dreadful factory environments, while the rich are contrastingly shown wallowing in useless displays of wasteful splendor.   The poor workers look sickly, and their work conditions are ghastly and unsafe, leading to horrific workplace injuries and deaths.

This supplies the background mood to the main story about Karol, Moryc, and Maks.  Paradoxically, though, this main story line is something of a weakness of the film. The effectiveness of the film comes from other quarters. One problem is that Daniel Olbrychski’s portrayal of the Karol character is flat, and I found it difficult to get a feeling for his character or to empathize with his thinking. On the other hand, although Wojciech Pszoniak’s portrayal of Moryc has been criticized as a cartoonish representation of Jewish ethnicity in such a serious setting, I thought that his performance was rather effective and supplied a needed energy to help fill the deficit due to the Karol character.

In fact the lurid depiction of this dark world is best conveyed not by the main narrative of Karol-Moryc-Maks, but by the various subplots.  There is the story of Bucholz and his cruel delight in the sufferings of his workers.  A wealthy textile mill owner, Kessler, coercively takes an innocent young factory girl as his concubine, to the ruination of her family.  Another businessman seeks to borrow money to pay his debts from the unfeeling Karol, who dismisses the request.  Afterwards the indebted man goes off on his carriage and shoots himself in the head rather than face the humiliation before him.  There is also Horn, an office worker in Karol’s factory, who rebels against the unfeeling attitude of the new industrial scene and heatedly tells off the unfeeling Bucholz as he resigns from his position.

All of these subplots are only partially depicted, without the usual background coverage to give the viewer a context. The resulting effect is to give the entire film an overall feeling like one is viewing broken shards of glass that have been taken from a larger portrait. One could attribute this sense of fragmentation to the re-edited version of the film that I saw, lasting 138 minutes, that was made in 2000 under Wajda’s supervision. This is some forty minutes shorter than the original 1975 release.  Moreover, the original release also included a four-hour television version with additional scenes – one would assume that the TV version must have been over 200 minutes. Would these longer versions give the viewer a better view?  I cannot say, because I have not seen them, but I suspect that those versions would have devoted the additional screen time to the Karol-Moryc-Maks aspects of the story, which I find less interesting than the atmospheric subplots.  As it stands the fragmented 138-minute version of the film that I saw has the dream-like expressionistic flavor that I appreciate.

And lest anyone think that The Promised Land is only a pro-communist tract, or perhaps just a period piece about conditions in late 19th century Poland, it might be more useful to view this film with another context in mind – the extractive industrial setting of modern-day China, with its Party-connected Princelings ruthlessly exploiting an unprotected labor sector often toiling in unsafe conditions.

★★★½

Notes:

1. There was one oafish cinematic moment in the film, however, where the Moryc character (Wojciech Pszoniak) broke the “fourth wall” by grinning straight into the camera.  This was a distraction and, in my view, a mistake on Wajda's part to let that stand.

Andrzej Wajda

Films of Andrzej Wajda:

• The Promised Land - Andrzej Wajda (1975)
  

“An Enemy of the People” - by Satyajit Ray (1989)

Satyajit Ray’s An Enemy of the People (Ganashatru, 1989) came several years after his previous feature, Home and the World (1984), an interlude caused by a serious heart attack that the great writer/director/composer suffered in 1983 and had left him debilitated for some time. In fact even with this resumption of his filmmaking, it seems that Ray’s customarily masterful mise-en-scene was held in restraint and limited to fairly static studio situations.

The film script is a fairly straightforward adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play of the same name (in Norwegian: En Folkefiende) describing the travails of a doctor who seeks to warn his community about a dangerous public health risk. In Ibsen’s time the concerns were apparently Victorian moral hypocrisy and public resistance to scientific modernism, issues that persist in today’s world but are perhaps even more relevant to societies that feature a mixture of modernist and traditional cultures like that of India.  So Ray’s translation of Ibsen’s story into an Indian context is particularly apt.  It is worth noting that Dariush Mehrjui’s very faithful adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) for his Sara (1992) is similarly appropriately rendered and very relevant to his modern Iranian context.

The story proceeds through four relatively static scenes in just a couple of locations that cover progressions in the doctor’s efforts to thwart a potential epidemic.

1.  The Threat of an Epidemic

The first section, lasting almost half of the film, takes place at the home of Doctor Ashok Gupta (played by Soumitra Chatterjee), who receives confirmation from a chemical laboratory of his suspicions that the densely populated area of Bhuvanpulli in his local town of Chandipur has a polluted water supply that is causing people to come down with jaundice and infectious hepatitis.  This could lead to an epidemic and widespread loss of life.  He contacts the local newspaper, Janavarta, to publish a notice warning people that the water supply in a densely populated area has health risks. 

But this warning immediately meets up with official resistance.  It turns out that Dr. Dupta’s brother, Nisith, is Chandipur’s mayor, and he has a vested interest in seeing to it that this news is blocked. Nisith was instrumental in establishing the local Tripureshwar temple in Bhuvanpulli, where faithful Hindus are given “holy” water to sip in order to cure their ailments. The town’s financial prosperity is now dependent on the business associated with the temple, and any panic about the water would severely affect revenues. So Nisith warns his brother not to publish anything further about the crisis (which could lead to shutting off the water supply in Bhuvanpulli).  Of course the public faces of Nisith and another wealthy civic leader, Mr. Bhargava, are not those of greedy businessmen, but rather those of devout and dedicated Hindus.  Their public claim is that the holy temple’s blessed tulsi leaves will purify any foreign or injurious elements in the water and will protect the faithful. 

Despite this opposition, Dr. Gupta does have a few purported allies. Janavarta’s avowedly progressive editor, Haridas Bagchi, and its publisher, Adhir Mukherjee, assure Dr. Gupta that they will see to it that the public is properly informed about the health menace.

2.  Backing Away
The second section takes place at the editorial office of the Janavarta newspaper.  Disregarding his brother’s warning, Dr. Gupta goes there to submit his own more detailed article identifying the temple area as the source of the polluted water and the steps that must be taken by the civic authorities in order to avert a health disaster.  At the newspaper office Dr. Gupta is greeted by assistant editor Biresh Guha, who heaps warm praise on the doctor for his public heroism. 

However, before long pervasive hypocrisy is revealed.  It turns out that editor Haridas and publisher Adhir are cowed by Nisith and the civic authorities, and they decide not to publish Gupta’s article.  In fact we learn that Haridas’s alleged progressivism is really just a cover for his attempts to woo Dr. Gupta’s daughter, Indrani.

Nisith, Haridas, and Adhir go on to say that they will block any attempt by Dr. Gupta to reveal the scientific findings.  So Dr. Gupta decides to hold a public meeting and has messages about it posted on all the public signboards.

3.  The Public Meeting

Despite official obstructions, Dr. Gupta manages to hold his public meeting, and a large crowd is attracted to hear the doctor read his unpublished article. Before the doctor can read his letter to the gathering, however, Nisith, Haridas, and Adhir disrupt the proceedings and convince the volatile crowd that the doctor is a “public enemy”.  Then the crowd is dispersed in panic by explosions apparently set off by Nisith's hired hooligans.

4.  The Aftermath
Back at Dr. Gupta’s home the next day, rioters opposed to the "public enemy" are hurling rocks through his windows.  He also gets the news that he will be forced to move out of this apartment and that he has also lost his job at the hospital.  In addition, his daughter Indrani has been fired from her job as a schoolteacher.  He seems to be beaten and has been abandoned by everyone but his family.  However, he then gets the upbeat news that his daughter’s fiancé, Ronen, has organized his friends in the local drama society to support him.  They vow to distribute his unpublished article door-to-door to everyone in town.  In addition, Biresh Guha comes over and announces that he has resigned from the hypocritical Janavarta newspaper and now as a freelance writer intends to send articles to the big-city newspapers in Calcutta telling them the truth about what has happened in Chandipur.  Thrilled by this support, Dr. Gupta is energized to carry on his fight for the public good.

Although Satyajit Ray stayed pretty close to Ibsen’s story and situated it appropriately in an Indian context, the production values here are not what you would expect from a Ray film.  Though the cast featured a number of veteran actors and actresses, the performances are mostly wooden and artificial.  In fact the entire production had the air of a 1960s television studio play, with the characters just reading their lines without conviction. The one bright spot is Soumitra Chatterjee in the role of Dr. Gupta.  Chatterjee was a Ray favorite and had appeared in many of his great films, including his debut performance some thirty years earlier in The World of Apu (Apur Sansar, 1959).  Chatterjee invariably evinces a certain naive and infectious optimism about the world and his place in it that helps give life to the films he is in.

Ray does add a few touches to Ibsen’s story that have value.  The support that Doctor Gupta receives from Ronen and Biresh Guha at the close of the story gives a positive uplift that was missing from Ibsen’s more downbeat closing.  Indeed, Ibsen apparently intended his stageplay to be something of a black comedy (before that notion hit the mass market), leaving the audience with a scathing view of modern hypocrisy.  Ray’s closing is more hopeful and uplifting.

Another Ray addition is the presentation of scientific issues around epidemic threats, which facilitates a useful comparison to some modern concerns – particularly that of global warming and climate change.  Nisith argues with his brother that the majority of people who drink the temple’s holy water don’t fall ill – therefore there couldn’t be anything wrong with that water.  But Dr. Gupta responds by pointing out that although some people have the natural immunity to resist the pathogens in the water, there are still many people not so immune, and so the contaminated water is still most likely to lead to a devastating epidemic unless something is done.  The statistical probabilities of a massive epidemic are too high to be ignored.  This echoes the current public debate about climate change, where those with vested interests in fossil fuel production try to raise doubts concerning the scientific predictions that predict climate change disaster as a strong near-term likelihood, but not with absolute certainty.  Thus extractive elites try to turn the cautious skepticism of scientific reasoning back on itself in order to dismiss all science-based warnings.

In addition there is also a higher-level concern in An Enemy of the People connected with how society should be organized, and this applies to Ibsen’s Norway, Mehrjui’s Iran, Ray’s India, and wherever you live, too. Since the emergence of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, there has been a recognition of rationally-based social principles that apply universally. Though there are varying opinions concerning the details, their overarching nature can be summarized in four basic principles which I refer to as RMDL, and which I have discussed before in connection with my reviews of Mohammad Rasoulof’s Head Wind (2008) and Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012). Here in An Enemy of the People, Dr. Gupta aligns himself with the RMDL principles:

• (Human) Rights.  Dr. Gupta recognizes the basic right-to-life of all people, no matter what station they have in life. In addition he recognizes the everyone’s’ individual right to self expression. His brother Nisith stood in opposition to these common rights.
• Markets.  This principle concerns a society’s need to support the free exchange of goods and services for all people.  Although not explicitly addressed in the film, Dr. Gupta’s allies’ plans to promote his ideas door-to-door indicate their faith in the opportunity to market their ideas.
• Democracy.  Society should be governed by the consent of all people.  Dr. Gupta’s public meeting reflects his faith that presenting evidence before the people gives them the opportunity to choose what to do.  Brother Nisith chose to block this process.
• Rule of Law.  This principle calls for a written set of publicly-known laws that can be adjusted by democratic processes.  Dr. Gupta said he planned to exercise his legal rights, but Nisith informed him that the town’s legal magistrate, a devout Hindu, was in his own pocket and would thwart due legal processes.

While Dr. Gupta espouses the RMDL principles, his brother Nisith and other civic leaders persistently try to block them.  So despite the film’s talky presentation, Ray did manage to cast his light on issues of contemporary concern.
★★½

“To Joy” - Ingmar Bergman (1950)

After the rather over-heated theatrics of Thirst (Törst, aka Three Strange Loves, 1949), Ingmar Bergman turned to a more personal and inward perspective for his next film, To Joy (Till Glädje, 1950), which he also scripted. This thematic redirection may have been motivated by a personal event in Bergman’s life that occurred at that time – the dissolution of his 2nd marriage. In any case, what we see in To Joy is a much more subtle portrayal of a romantic relationship and the ups and downs that happen to the couple over an eight-year period.

Some people might say that this is just another cinematic love story – a theatrical “scenes from a marriage”, if you will.  But I would say that this film has an almost philosophical perspective, as suggested by its title, that elevates this story above the usual offerings of this nature.  Behind the  story about two musicians who fall in love, there is the overlying theme of harmonic resonance – as overtly manifested by symphonic orchestral collaboration – that pervades the entire film. 

In fact the theme of harmonious collaborative production was something in which Bergman undoubtedly took a serious personal interest.  He had a masterful way of starting with a theatrical, almost stagy, and dramatic conception and crafting it into a compelling cinematic narrative. And he repeatedly accomplished this feat by working closely and collaboratively with his actors, camera crew, and production team [1]. Here, as with his other films, especially those in collaboration with the outstanding cinematographer Gunnar Fischer, Bergman’s camera movements (sometimes over the course of a shot lasting several minutes) are melded together with the dramatically motivated movements of the actors to create a natural narrative movement to the presentation.  All of this is done to convey a feeling for what Bergman had in mind in connection with “joy”.

The story of the film concerns the passion-filled experiences of a 25-year-old musician, Stig Eriksson, who, like most young men, seeks greatness.  In the case for Stig, this means greatness as a solo violinist.  He wants to be a star, above all others, and he feels that he has the capabilities to do so.  However, the film’s title, “To Joy”, which has an explicit musical reference in the story, points thematically to some kind of greatness that transcends Stig’s personal view.  To a certain extent what transpires in the film is a depiction of Stig’s journey to see what this means.

That explicit reference of the film’s title is to Friedrich Schiller’s poem, “Ode to Joy” (1785, 1803) [2], which was used as a choral element to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (1824).  If you read that poem, you will see that Schiller was not evoking mundane pleasures, but something rapturous, almost ecstatic.  Indeed, joy for Schiller has cosmic importance [3]:

    Joy is the name of the strong spring
    In eternal nature.
    Joy, joy drives the wheels
    In the great clock of worlds.
    She lures flowers from the buds,
    Suns out of the firmament,
    She rolls spheres in the spaces
    That the seer's telescope does not know.

And yet as can be seen in the film, these rapturous moments are really usually embedded in ordinary experiences that feature a harmonious interpersonal resonance.  It takes years for Stig Eriksson to experience this epiphany.  For us to experience his journey first-hand, Bergman presents almost everything from Stig’s point of view.  Because of his earnest, almost childish, innocence, we can empathize with Stig along the way, although his selfish narcissism is sometimes off-putting.  So despite our seeing (almost) everything from Stig’s personal perspective, our sympathies and ultimate appreciation come to focus on the source of Stig’s ultimate epiphany – his loving wife, Marta Olsson.

The story of To Joy moves through six phases or acts, with the key inner four of these acts depicting flashback episodes in which Stig’s self-centeredness causes a problem.

1.  Tragic News
Violinist Stig Eriksson (played by Stig Olin) is interrupted from an orchestra rehearsal to receive the tragic news of his wife’s death.  She had been visiting family and had burned to death in a cottage fire when a kerosene stove exploded.  As is typical of Bergman’s cinematography when key emotional events take place, the news is conveyed in a single extended shot, this one lasting 85 seconds.  As the grieving Stig reflects on his loss, the film moves into a flashback reflection, signified by the image of a harp playing.

2.  Stig and Marta Meet
Stig and Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) are introduced as new violinists in a symphony orchestra conducted by Sönderby (Victor Sjöström), a stern task-master. Here we are shown one of the many visually compelling and suggestive tracking shots of orchestra players combining their skills to achieve a grand harmony that goes beyond the talents of any one player. This is the visual motif behind the story of Stig and Marta.

It is immediately clear that the naive Stig is inexperienced and no social match for the attractive and sociable Marta – especially when he compares himself to the super-confidant, suave, and somewhat oily fellow musician Marcel (Birger Malmsten).  At Marta’s birthday party that evening, Stig gets very drunk and launches into an embarrassingly boastful tirade about his artistic talents and integrity.  He’s so drunk in fact that he passes out, and Marta has to let him sleep it off on her couch.  In the morning Stig gives her a teddy-bear gift he had bought for her, and this is the first of the “key relationship scenes” (KRS1) in the film.  Like other such scenes, it features a lengthy (92 seconds) moving-camera shot of the two of them interacting in medium-shot and closeup range.

3.  Stig and Marta Get Together
It is now Autumn and Stig and Marta are more intimate and talking of love.  Marta is the experienced one – she has been married before – and while talking of love she maneuvers the conversation over to the idea that they should move in together (KRS2).

Later they decide to get married. While preparing for the marriage ceremony, Marta tells Stig (in a 3-minute shot) that she is already pregnant. The news shocks and disturbs Stig, who doesn’t want a baby, and Marta responds by telling him that he is childish, selfish, and cruel. This is followed by a second 3-minute shot in which Stig manages to make up to her and restore their relationship (KRS3).  They then go ahead with the marriage ceremony (KRS4) as planned, with Marta silently showing her rapturous pleasure.

4.  Going Solo
Stig’s goal is not just to remain an ensemble violinist, but to be a featured soloist.  He gets his chance to be a star, but his performance at a public event in a key solo movement is a failure. Afterwards unable to soothe his disappointments, he quarrels with Marta and rejects her consolation by telling her, “inside, you’re always alone.”

Somewhat later Marta is having labor pains, and she is taken to and left with the doctor.  Shortly thereafter during a rehearsal, Stig is interrupted with the joyous news that his child has been born. (This scene reverberates with the opening scene when he was interrupted to hear about his wife’s death.)  Stig rushes to the hospital delivery room to meet Marta, and they silently embrace (KRS5).

5.  Quarreling and Making Up

It is now three years later, and Stig is still obsessed with making it as a soloist. He is also having an affair with Nelly (Margit Carlqvist), the wife of the orchestra manager. At home in a key 140-second shot (KRS6), Marta accuses him about the affair, and he coldly criticizes her for having had affairs before they knew each other. Losing his temper, Stig slaps Marta around in the bed, and their relationship appears to have reached its end.  Marta moves out with their two kids.

But three months later Stig writes to Marta renewing his love, and she welcomes him back.  He takes the train to meet her, and they reunite in love (KRS7).

Some years later in a brief scene, Stig and Marta are shown living happily together with their two children, who appear now to be about six and seven years of age. While they are preparing for Marta to go off with one of the children to visit grandmother’s place, they are shown taking along a kerosene stove that will be used for them to stay in a cottage next to grandmother’s house.

6.  Return to the Present
The harp playing is again shown, indicating that the flashback recollections are over.  Stig is gripped in grief, but returns to the rehearsal to prepare for a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.  The conductor Sönderby tries to convey to his performers the idea of what is meant by the “Ode to Joy” 4th movement:

Not the joy expressed in laughter or the joy that says, ‘I’m happy’”. . . What I mean is a joy so great, so special, that it lies beyond pain and boundless despair.  It’s a joy beyond all understanding.

As they play, Stig sadly reflects on his years with Marta, visualizing moments from all their key relationship scenes.

As usual, Bergman worked with a small, theatrically-experienced acting ensemble in order to externalize the intense human emotions that are presented in his work. The role of orchestra conductor Sönderby was played by noted film director Victor Sjöström, who would later more famously play the lead role in Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957).  Stig Olin, in the role of Stig Eriksson, was a Bergman regular, and as the center of focalization, he performs well.  But it is the performance of Maj-Britt Nilsson, as Marta, that really makes the film memorable. She evokes the selfless empathy and compassion that makes joy possible.

In fact the narrative mode of focalization is almost an issue in To Joy.  While the focalization is almost entirely focused on Stig’s journey, it is not exclusively so.  There are conspicuous moments when the focalization shifts over to Sönderby and to Marta, and this is somewhat disturbing to the narrative flow.  But perhaps this was an explicit effort on Bergman’s part to heighten the awareness of harmonious collaboration.  After all, it is this convergence of diverse feelings and perspectives that brings about joy.

★★★

Notes:

1. See for example, “Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie” (Vilgot Sjöman, 1963), The Film Sufi, 2014.
2. Friedrich Schiller, “Ode to Joy”, presented in Scott Horton, “Schiller’s Freedom Hymn”, Harper’s Blog, November 9, 2008. 
3. Friedrich Schiller, “Ode to Joy”, “Wikisource”.

“Interstellar” - Christopher Nolan (2014)

Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) is another mind-bending science fiction thriller – this time about astronauts searching for a new planet for human habitation in the not-too-distant future. The film was co-scripted with his brother Jonathon Nolan, who also had co-writing credits for Nolan’s earlier Memento (2000), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). 

Here again, as with his Inception (2010), Nolan presents conventional action-adventure muscularity in a highly imaginative science-fiction-warped context.  And again Nolan apparently has a box-office bonanza on his hands.  From my perspective, though, there are problems with this film that make it unlikely to suit discerning tastes.

The story is somewhat complicated, but there are a couple of relatively straightforward elements that I will go over.

In the future, life on earth will apparently be run by peacenik socialists (probably the right-winger’s version of the apocalypse) who have eliminated war but have been unable to stop population growth and the depletion of natural resources.  To feed the human population, almost everyone is coerced into farming; but climate catastrophes and agrarian pestilence are now (at the start of the film) leading to looming disaster.

In this context we meet Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey), an obstreperous Texan and former NASA test pilot who was forced into farming like everybody else. A widowed father, he lives on his mechanized farm with his father-in-law (John Lithgow) and his two children, one of whom, his 10-year-old daughter Murphy, thinks that she has received symbolic signals from a ghost. Though scoffing at the notion of ghosts, Cooper decodes these “messages” into geographic coordinates and seeks out their location, which is found to be a secret NASA research base led by the elderly Professor Brand (Michael Caine).

Cooper’s discovery of Brand’s secret laboratory and launching site turns out to be opportunistic, because Brand immediately recruits him to pilot NASA’s spaceship on a mission crucial to mankind’s survival.  The only way to save humanity, it seems, is to find another planet that is habitable and then transport everyone to go live there.  But the problem is: there are no known habitable planets within many light years of the Earth, and time for humanity is running out.  However, Brand and his researchers have discovered a “wormhole” near the planet Saturn that they believe has been conveniently placed there by benevolent aliens and which could provide a relativistic shortcut to other habitable planets. Three earlier missions had been sent out to that wormhole and may have found something on the other side, but there has been no communication with them since. Cooper’s mission is to find out if those earlier missions have found a good planet.  If a habitable planet can be found, then Brand has two alternative plans to save mankind:

• Plan A.  Solve the problem of transporting all of humanity to that planet in a short space of time (remember, time is running out on Earth).  This apparently involves writing a lot of equations on the blackboard and looking for the “solution”.
• Plan B. If Plan A doesn’t work, then send a few hundred frozen human embryos (presumably with a midwife or two for care giving) to the newly discovered planet.

Plan A is preferable, of course, since Plan B means that the existing human population on Earth would perish.

So Cooper sets out on the spacecraft Endurance with a crew that includes a geographer, a physicist, two English-speaking robots, and a pretty biologist and daughter of Professor Brand named Amelia (Anne Hathaway).  Everyone has a Ph.D and is a brilliant scientist, of course, except for the cowboy Cooper.  They reach the wormhole and learn how to trace the three previous missions, separately led by scientists Miller, Edmunds, and Mann.  First they head for Miller’s planet, but it orbits a powerful black hole whose gravitational field is so strong that it causes intense time dilatation – one hour on that planet corresponds to seven years back on Earth.  Cooper, Amelia, and the geographer leave the Endurance on a shuttle to visit Miller’s planet, but it turns out to be disastrous – the planet is uninhabitable, Miller is dead, the biologist is killed, and their few hours visit there means that 23 years have elapsed back on the Endurance and on Earth. 

This time shift turns out to be the key plot-element of the story: when Cooper and Amelia return to the Endurance, they are unchanged, but everyone else is 23 years older, including the now 50-ish physicist on the Endurance and the people on Earth. Cooper’s daughter Murphy (Jessica Chastain) back on Earth is now in her mid-30s and has become a theoretical physicist (of course) working in Professor Brand’s laboratory to further Plan A.  Just before Brand’s dies of old age, he confesses to her that he had long thought Plan A to be theoretically unachievable.  Murphy plows ahead anyway with her theoretical calculations, though, hoping to find a solution for Plan A.  So there are now two parallel threads of action: (a) Murphy on Earth working more or less hopelessly on Plan A and (b) Cooper and the Endurance out beyond the wormhole.

After some arguments between Cooper and Amelia, the Endurance is eventually directed to Mann’s planet, where Dr. Mann (Mat Damon) is still alive.  But this planet, too, proves to be uninhabitable, and the encounter with Mann ends in violence.  Eventually with the Endurance running low on fuel, it is sent back to Earth with Amelia, while Cooper and one of the intelligent robots separately navigate a small space shuttle into a black hole. Falling into the black hole, Cooper finds himself tumbling into an extra-dimensional space-time warp that enables him to connect with other points in space and time. Managing to connect with his 10-year-old daughter, Cooper, in an effort to save humanity, turns out to be the ghost who had earlier in the film sent Murphy messages.  He also sends the 33-year-old Murphy messages that eventually help her solve the problem of Plan A and rescue humanity.  So everyone gets saved thanks to Cooper and Murphy.

Over the course of Interstellar, the action moves along at a fast pace, but our ultimate satisfaction will depend on how the narrative evolves in a coherent fashion.  In most films there are two main narrative threads: an action thread involving some goal in the external world for the protagonist(s) and a narrative thread involving the evolution of one or more relationships.  In a science-fiction film the action thread is compounded by a scientific aspect that challenges the minds of the protagonists and the viewers. The filmmaker must present something that is scientifically imaginative but that is also scientifically plausible.  That’s what we have in Interstellar, too, but there are problems with this film along all of these lines.

In connection with the action thread, there are several issues.

• The main idea of the action narrative is this Plan-A/Plan-B thing.  We get that basic outline OK, but the fundamental issue of Plan A is just passed off as some theoretical problem that must be solved by mathematical equations. The viewer is shown some equations on a blackboard, but there is no attempt at presenting a narrative trajectory about this. It’s just shown as a very hard, wonky problem that requires mathematical genius. Since Plan A is such a key aspect of the story, it leaves a big narrative hole in the film.
• Gravity, particularly in connection with Coriolis “forces”, is always a problem in SciFi films set in outer space and I won’t be too strict on that score [1], but it still seems to be treated very casually in a film where gravity is an important issue. Nevertheless and despite the participation of physicist Kip Thorne in the production, there are some things that strike me as unrealistic.  When the astronauts on the other side of the wormhole are near a black hole and descend to Miller’s planet, they encounter such an intense gravitational field that it causes severe time dilatation, as described above. It seems to me that such an intense gravitational field would crush biological organisms and prevent normal biological processes.  But this is not addressed.
• It also seems highly unrealistic that Professor Brand would immediately assign Cooper to pilot his spacecraft without any preparation.  It would seem to me that the complications associated with such a mission would require months of planning and training.  And if Brand knew that Cooper was a good choice, why didn’t he recruit him in the first place – Cooper showed up at Brand’s space laboratory on his own accord and somewhat by serendipity.
• There are various narrative dead-ends in the story – narrative threads that are initiated and then dropped and forgotten.  For example at the beginning of the film, Cooper is interested in tracking drones launched by the Indian government that are flying over his farmland. He tries to commandeer these drones, but surely there should be something more significant to these events than merely making a toy for his 10-year-old daughter.

There are also problems with the relational narrative threads in the story.

• The relationship between Cooper and his daughter, Murphy, which is presumably important, is never developed. Sure, Murphy always calls her, “Murph”, but that isn’t enough to establish an interesting relationship. And later in the story Murphy condemns and rejects her father for what she believes to be his commitment to Plan B. That’s not a very filial attitude to have toward’s one's parent if we are supposed to be looking at a meaningful relationship.
• We are set up for a relationship to evolve between Cooper and Amelia Brand, but nothing much develops along these lines, either.  There is no chemistry, nothing interesting along the lines of personal interaction between these two characters.  At the end of the film, we are led to believe that Cooper will seek out Amelia, but we haven’t been given any reason or motivation to believe that this is interesting.
• There is a presumed existing amorous relationship between Amelia and Edmunds, the astronaut who had gone on an earlier planet-exploration mission through the wormhole but had never returned.  But we never see Edmunds, and we are never given any information about what that relationship means to Amelia. This is another narrative hole in the story.

There is a potentially interesting relationship-narrative theme that could have been explored but was not.  It concerns one’s personal stance towards commitment to others.  It is curious that Professor Brand and others are wrathfully despised by some other people, such as Murphy and Amelia, for trying to work on Plan B.  If Plan A is really not feasible, is it so reprehensible to still strive to save humanity in some form?  In fact the film portrays four general ethical and empathic stances that one might take in life:

• Selfish.  One is only concerned with his or her personal welfare. This could be attributed to Dr. Mann.  (Incidentally, I am not really a fan of Mat Damon, but I find that whenever he shows up in a movie, the story becomes more interesting – and this is the case in this film, too.)
• Immediate close associates.  One strives primarily to help one’s family and loved ones.  This stance is taken by Amelia and Cooper.
• Everyone.  One works on behalf of everyone living.  Murphy and Cooper seem to be concerned at this level.
• Universal.  One works for the abstract, future benefit of people yet to be born. Professor Brand and Dr. Mann are concerned here.

These various empathic stances move from the personal to the abstract, and it is interesting that the women in this story occupy the middle layers, while the men are more associated with the more selfish and abstract.  A potentially interesting elaboration would have been the consideration of how the intelligent robots fit into this scheme (compare with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)).  Anyway, this aspect of personal empathy is not really developed in Interstellar, while it was examined successfully in Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011).  In Malick’s film there are also a number of narrative threads, but he manages to endow each of those elements with a dramatic vitality that is missing in Nolan’s film.

It seems that Nolan has established a pattern for his films since Memento and Insomnia (2002) that constitutes his formula for success – start with a budget of around $200 million, make a near 3-hour epic with a convoluted plot structure, and artificially elevate the tension with a blaring and jarring musical score by Hans Zimmer. This may work at the box office with a public satisfied with the short-term distractions of video games, but it doesn’t live up to the real potential of science fiction, which is to explore the mysterious unknown of human existence.  It has been my observation in the past that British authors and filmmakers have understood this element better than those from America.  Great science fiction evokes from us a sense of wonder, if not horror, about the horizons of our world.  But Britisher Nolan is the exception here and to my mind is more like an American.  His films are essentially mechanical exercises strewn with gameplay and present a mechanical/reductionist view of reality, but they miss out on that crucial element of mystery.

★★

Notes:

1. Dave Van Domelen, “Frame Effects on Space Stations”, Kansas State University Physics Education Research Group, 13 January 2008.