Interstellar

'Mankind was born on Earth. But it was never meant to die here.' 48 years earlier, a wormhole appeared near Saturn, opening a path to a distant galaxy with twelve potentially habitable planets located near a black hole named "Gargantua". Under the name, The Lazarus Project, a group of 12 people were set on a epic journey to those planets, to find some sustainable life. Only 3 people, Miller, Mann (Matt Damon) and Edmunds, could be able to get some positive results. Presently, in a dystopian era, where survival of mankind becomes critical due to severe dust storms and crop blights, the scientials of NASA, led by Prof. John Brand (Michael Caine) put their thinking caps on and comes up with a plan to travel and find the best suitable planet of the three. The project's prime purpose is to find a place with sustainable life in the universe, where mankind can survive. After studying the physics related problems (though not yet complete) on the respective planets, NASA plans to find those astronauts, who  went into cryosleep and transport the mankind there. Naming it 'Endurance', Professor Brand's daughter, Dr. Amelia Brand (Annie Hathaway), Dr. Romilly, and Dr. Doyle are set for the voyage to save the mankind, but the only one missing in their crew,  is an efficient astronaut who can steer the spaceship and also understand the science.  

Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a widowed engineer and former NASA pilot, runs a farm with his father-in-law Donald, son Tom, and daughter Murph. Crop blights and dust storms are occur regularly, killing crops like okra, farming becomes to be a onerous task. Living in a post-truth society, Cooper is reprimanded for telling Murph that the Apollo missions did occur; he encourages her to carefully observe and record what she sees. She does encounter falling books from the rack and believes it to be a ghost, the but father and daughter observes a binary pattern which reads S T A Y. While they are on their way to their school, they notice a strange drone passing by and later they discovers it to be an Indian surveillance drone that draws her interest. One day during the dust storm, when the baseball game is cancelled, they discover some strange dust patterns in Murph's room, which is a result of gravity variations and translate into geographic coordinates; but Murph attributing it to the ghost. They set their path to find where the coordinates lead to.

The coordinates leads them to the secret NASA facility, protected by a robot TARS, which stops them to cut the fencing. Both the Coopers are interrogated for entering the restricted area and Joseph finds this facility is running under Prof. John Brand supervision, with whom he worked earlier. They discuss about the Lazarus Project and Prof. Brand explains he has conceived two plans to ensure humanity's survival. Plan A involves developing a gravitational propulsion theory to propel a mass exodus on massive space habitats, while Plan B is a conventional launch of the Endurance spacecraft with 5,000 frozen human embryos to colonize a habitable planet. He requests Cooper to join the Endurance mission, as he is the best known pilot with engineering brain. He convinces Cooper saying this is his only chance for human survival and he can save his children too. Convinced with Brand's argument, Cooper join's the team. When Murph refuses to see him off, he promises his return and leaves her his wristwatch to compare their relative time when he returns.

The crew consists of Cooper, the robots TARS and CASE, and the scientists Dr. Amelia Brand, Dr. Romilly, and Dr. Doyle, travelling to the planet Saturn. Romilly explains Cooper about wormhole theory and Amelia evinces her interest towards Edmunds. It takes them 2 years to reach Saturn and breach a wormhole and while they are breaching the wormhole, Amelia experiences first Interstellar handshake. After traversing the wormhole, Romilly studies the singularity and warns Cooper and team that every hour they spend in Millers planet is equivalent to spending 7 earth years. Upon hearing this Cooper, Doyle and Amelia descend in one of four landing crafts to investigate Miller's planet, an ocean world with 130% of Earth's gravity. After landing in knee-high water and finding only wreckage from Miller's expedition, a gigantic tidal wave kills Doyle and delays departure. Due to the proximity to the black hole, time is severely dilated, as a result, 23 years have elapsed for Romilly on Endurance by the time they return.

Knowing that 23 years have passed by, Cooper checks his messages sent by his family and comes to know about his father-in-law Donald's death, Tom (Casey Affleck) taking care of his farm, and Murph (Jessica Chastain), left home, became a scientist and working under Prof. Brand. Amelia suggests Edmunds' planet over Mann's planet because it has slightly better telemetry, but Cooper is unconvinced to go to Edmunds first, though they have limited fuel, as Amelia is in love with Edmunds. Mann is still broadcasting from his planet, so Cooper rules they use their remaining fuel to reach Mann's planet. En route, they receive messages from Earth; Murph has learned from Professor Brand on his deathbed that Plan B was his only real plan, since Plan A required unattainable gravitational singularity data from within a black hole. 

On Mann's frozen planet, the Endurance crew revive Mann from cryostasis. He assures them colonization is possible, despite an extreme environment. They find the robot KIPP in dead state and TARS requests to fix. Mann pushes them off saying he cannot be fixed. Believing Mann's words, Cooper and Mann set their journey on foot to find a suitable place to execute Plan B. On the excursion, Mann attempts to kill Cooper and reveals that he broadcast falsified data in the hope of being rescued. He steals a lander and heads for the Endurance. While a booby trap set by Mann in robot KIPP, kills Romilly who is trying to fix it. Amelia rescues Cooper with a second lander and they race to the Endurance.  Mann is not authorized to enter Endurance and docking his lander to it becomes impossible. As, any forceful will threaten their lives, Cooper asks Mann to stop doing it. Without paying any heed to Cooper's words Mann tries manual docking operation and dies severely damaging the Endurance. After a difficult docking maneuver, Cooper regains control of Endurance. 

With insufficient fuel, they head for Edmunds' planet, with the embryos, using a slingshot maneuver so close to Gargantua that time dilation adds another 51 years. In the process, to save weight, Cooper jettisons himself and TARS in two landers to ensure Endurance can reach Edmunds' planet maneuvered by Amelia. Slipping through the event horizon of Gargantua, they eject from their respective landers and find themselves in a tesseract, possibly constructed by humans of the far future. TARS comes in contact with Cooper making the inter-tesseract communication possible. He begins to understand that gravity and time physical dimensions and they can be altered. Across time, Cooper can see through the bookcases of Murph's old room on Earth and weakly interact with its gravity. He also understands that future humans picked Murph, as a pioneer across time to solve the gravity equation using quantum data and build this tessaract to interact. Realizing that he is now Murph's "ghost", he manipulates the second hand of the wristwatch he gave her, transmitting the quantum data that TARS collected from inside the event horizon via Morse code. Murph who is trying to save her brother's family for the dust storm diseases, comes to know that the ghost is her father and the information her father is sending is the quantum data to solve the gravity equation. She solves the equation with her father's help and he gets ejected out with TARS of the black hole into wormhole handshaking Amelia, as the tessaract's purpose is completed. Cooper awakes on a space habitat orbiting Saturn. He comes to know that space habitat is named after Murph Cooper and his age is 134 earth years (though he looks 40). He reunites with his daughter, now an old woman nearing death. Using the quantum data, she was able to develop the gravitational propulsion theory, enabling humanity's exodus and transformation into an advanced spacefaring civilization. He keeps his promise to meet her again and she doesn't want him to be around as she is dying. She reminds her father that she has her family members to take care of her and Amelia is out there alone, as Edmunds died. Cooper and TARS take a spacecraft to rejoin Amelia and CASE, who are setting up a human colony on Edmunds' habitable planet.

Christopher Nolan, a man who doesn't need any introduction, weaved a stellar film called 'Interstellar'. Brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan wrote the screenplay, which had its origins in a script Jonathan developed in 2007.Composer Hans Zimmer, who scored Nolan's Batman film trilogy and Inception (2010), returned to score Interstellar. Nolan chose not to provide Zimmer with a script or any plot details for writing the film's music, but instead gave the composer a single page that told the story of a father leaving his child for work. It was through this connection that Zimmer created the early stages of the Interstellar soundtrack. Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne was an executive producer, acted as scientific consultant, and wrote a tie-in book, The Science of Interstellar. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot it on 35 mm in anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm. He was influenced by what he called "key touchstones" of science fiction cinema, including Metropolis (1927), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Blade Runner (1982), Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979). Nolan and his crew studied the IMAX NASA documentaries of filmmaker Toni Myers for visual reference of spacefaring missions, and strove to imitate their use of IMAX cameras in the enclosed spaces of spacecraft interiors.

Interstellar is a gigantic emotional tale between father and daughter. The brilliance in execution on the film with CGI takes a bow. The score by Zimmer, brings suspense to the film and leaves us awestruck. Nolan made (most of the) people to understand what wormhole and black holes are. Most of the makers, who show black holes as 2D, which is a big scientific blunder should see this. Wormholes are the spatial breaches which paves way into other galaxies. That portrayal in this film is brilliant with mind boggling imagery. Nolan wants the people to understand that, the future humans, whom Cooper calls 'T H E Y', understood the gravity equation from Murph and presented time and gravity in physical form via 5D tessaract. Though the logic sounds unconvincing, he succeeded in presenting it. Most of the physics and meta physics does work in this film, love (intuition) transcending time and space is mind-popping (even Amelia couldn't explain it). This film leads to a paradoxical situation where the beginning and ending meet, raising multiple questions and doubts regarding alternate timelines. The fine thread of emotion between father and daughter does keep us intact, making an edge of the seat thriller. This is one of the finest portrayals of epic space journeys after '2001: A Space Odyssey' by Stanley Kubrick. Filmmakers and film-lovers need to watch this film multiple times to understand the actual science behind it, but for normal audience it is a mind-popping  scientific lecture.