Christopher Nolan, Charlie Kaufman and the Creative Death of Hollywood Film

I finally finished my rewatch of Interstellar. When I first saw it in-theater, I was confused by some plot points, and figured it would settle better if I could watch again. Uh-uh.

So Matthew McConaughey and Company are sent through a specially created wormhole to find a new home for earthlings by their distant future descendants - who'd only exist if that new home had been found.

He manages to achieve this by sending messages back in time to himself which could only be received if he'd gotten the message in the first place.

Finally, he contradicts all previous actions by sending himself a message of "don't go", which, if followed, would make most of the players and events in the movie (including himself) not exist. Immediately thereafter, and after no discernible change of mind, he contradicts himself yet again by sending information that will lead to everyone's rescue and happy future.

This all is made possible via his rescue by the aforementioned distant future descendants, who give him a communication channel via an awfully specific bookshelf in an awfully specific room that they somehow know about, but couldn't communicate through, themselves, necessitating the entire convoluted and logically absurd set-up of the film. Why? Because Morse code can only be sent via, like, Love.


I'm not one of those moviegoers who insists on meticulous realism and who gets all crazy about plot holes. I just need some "there" to be there; anything beyond fancy pretentious horseshit. But this is how it nearly always goes with Nolan, a supposed stickler for detail and for science who depicts a Saturn V-style rocket launch from inside an office building while workers continue to blithely work.

Nolan is considered a brainy, geeky presence in Hollywood because he is merely 99.5% mush. He's like the dull-headed kid deemed a smarty by the other dull-headed playground kids because he's always going on about quantum this or that and drawing pictures of terribly complicated-seeming machines.

Much like how Charlie Kaufman, another poseurish mess, is seen as a penetratingly insightful commentator on human psychology for his audaciously lofty and vacant bong hit-fueled nonsense.

Nolan and Kaufman are the two horsemen of cinematic apocalypse; the ultimate naked emperors baffling with bullshit for lack of any ability to dazzle with brilliance - and getting over because they're the only ones even making an effort to transcend the standard moldy, suffocating formulas.