I take advantage of my visit to the not-so-mesmerizing and not-so-immersive Parisian exhibition “A night under the full moon” by François Riberolles (it dates back to last February) to evoke two absolutely fascinating science fiction films: “Interstellar” (2014) by Chris Nolan and “Arrival” (2016) by Dennis Villeneuve.
Contemplating the stars or imagining other types of extraterrestrial life leads us to put into perspective the existence that the human species leads on this small pebble which turns both on itself and around a sun, and in fact leads us to ask us a thousand metaphysical questions.
And when Nolan and Villeneuve – two of the most brilliant directors of our time – are involved, the metaphysical questioning becomes absolutely sublime and totally impactful (that is to say, we take a big slap).
“Interstellar” stars Matthew McConaughey as Joseph Cooper, a former NASA pilot, who lives on a planet Earth devastated by a climate and food crisis. His close relationship with his 10-year-old daughter, Murphy, shatters like glass when he decides to go into space with NASA in the company of Amelia Brand (interpreted by Anne Hathaway), in order to find a habitable planet to save a doomed humanity on Earth. The years go by. Joseph and Amelia explore a new galaxy and visit, at their greatest peril, several planets while Murphy, now an adult (interpreted by Jessica Chastain) has become a physicist at NASA.
The movie, which is based on the real work of American physicist Kipp Thorne, evokes wormholes, black holes and tesseracts, but through all these very complex concepts, “Interstellar” evokes above all time and its relativity.
Wormholes, whose existence is not proven, would constitute a shortcut through space-time.
Black holes, whose existence is proven, are not holes but celestial objects whose gravitational intensity is such that they cannot emit light (and that is why they are “black”). To put it simply, black holes have such a mass that any object passing through their horizon will be sucked in by their gravitational force. In “Interstellar”, Gargantua is the black hole around which the planet Miller orbits. The mass and gravitational influence of Gargantua is such that time passes more slowly than on Earth, which refers to the scientific “twin paradox”.
According to such paradox, time passes more or less quickly if the reference frames are different, the best example being that – hypothetical – of two twins, one remaining on Earth, the other making a round trip by rocket through space at the speed of light. When the traveling twin meets his twin who stayed on Earth, he is younger than the latter, even though the time they each have spent on Earth and in the rocket will have passed normally for each of them. Each has had a different frame of reference, the sedentary twin having a Galilean frame of reference (i.e. inertial, i.e. the Earth in this experiment), the traveling twin having left this Galilean frame of reference. This is the principle of relativity.
This is what happens to Joseph Cooper and his daughter Murphy during “Interstellar”: as the reference frames of Joseph and Murphy are different, Joseph barely ages while Murphy, the child left behind on Earth, becomes a woman – the best example being the planet Miller with giant waves where a few minutes equal decades on planet Earth.
Time is still the issue Joseph faces when he enters the tesseract. While humanity lives in four dimensions (three spatial dimensions (length, width and height) and one temporal dimension, time), the tesseract of “Interstellar” is the illustration of the “string theory” – which exists in theory but has never been verified in fact – with a multitude of dimensions that allow Joseph to see every moment of his daughter’s life and interact with her and with himself.
To sum up, “Interstellar,” which can be thanked for its hyper-intelligent popularization of complex concepts, is about science but ultimately about love.
“Arrival” stars Amy Adams as Louise Banks. Louise is a little depressed, Louise has disturbing flashbacks that leave her a bit unsettled. Louise is also an expert in comparative linguistics and it is in this capacity that the American army recruits her to establish a mode of communication with the extraterrestrial vessels which have just appeared, floating in the air, to humanity. The ships carry two extraterrestrials (who have the grace of not being humanoid since they look like huge cuttlefish or octopuses), do not communicate verbally but thanks to circular signs created by the ink propelled by their tentacles.
The movie obviously addresses the issues of communication and the difficult construction of a common language, but also the (contested) Sapir-Whorf theory according to which the way of seeing the world depends on the language one learns. The neuroplasticity that the learning of a new language supposes would thus be accompanied by the learning of the stranger culture and its specificities.
And, as a matter of fact, as Louise deciphers the language of extraterrestrials, she sees her brain envisioning existence and time, no longer like the human being that she is, but like extraterrestrials.
“First Contact”, which is based on the very real work of the British mathematician and physicist Stephen Wolfram also evokes the relativity of time, the distortions of space-time and the question of the linear or circular conception that one can have about time. Humanity has a linear view of time with past, present and future and this linearity has no other outcome than death.
And in fact, the humanity represented in “First Contact” is oppressed by its fears, guided by its sole instinct for survival, whether we are talking about the political leaders or the populations frightened by the arrival of extraterrestrials.
The contrast with the two extraterrestrials – calm, wise and serene – is staggering. The contrast with their conception of time is also disturbing: far from being linear, their conception is circular, as suggested by the round signs they use to express themselves. There is no past, no present, no future – time is a loop where times intertwine. Louise’s daughter’s first name, Hannah, is another example of circularity: Hannah is indeed a palindrome – it reads both ways.
Eventually, Louise will find more than a common language with them, she will find herself.
“Arrival” may evoke complex concepts, but it too is ultimately about love.
(Here are a few pictures taken during the exhibition “A night under the full moon”. The exhibition was not immersive at all, the quality of the pictures is very bad. Anyway.)
Let’s enjoy the NASA pictures now:
December 8, 2023
