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Sample II. Interstellar. Top 100 works in English literature for extra reading
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Sample II
Interstellar
By Christopher Nolan
Interstellar is a sci-fi epic directed, co-written and produced by Christopher Nolan and starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Matt Damon, and Michael Caine. The film is set in a dystopian future where humanity is doomed to die unless a group of astronauts finds a new home for mankind.
The main character (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA astronaut Cooper, runs a farm with his family in the heartland of America struggling against crop failure and dust storms. Deciphering messages left by an invisible ghost in his daughter's room, he comes upon NASA management. Some time later, despite his daughter's bitter objections, he is recruited to join the expedition started to find a better place for mankind. The group of astronauts have to go through a black hole. Due to the proximity of the black hole, time is severely dilated, which means that Cooper's children grow up, mature and eventually become elderly in the meantime. The expedition fails, the Earth is ruined and uninhabitable, but Cooper's daughter, Murh, through her father's help, who turns out to be the ghost that haunted her in her childhood, finds a way to build several orbital stations. In the final scene, Cooper reunites with his elderly daughter. The daughter does not want to pass away in her father's presence, so she sends him away to join his partner, Dr. Amelia Brand (Ann Hataway).
The film caused much controversy among viewers and critics. Some consider it to be full of profound meaning and implications while others tend to see no point in it. That is why it is worth analysing it from the psychological perspective.
To my mind, the central images are indicative of Nolan's message. Maize raised by Cooper in his farm is a resource, a source of life. A clock is a kind of clutch which helps man to navigate in time. As a mechanism, it symbolizes a matrix or a code which a human being can use in order to escape his own personal individual rhythm and choose an alien to his body mechanical and monotonous rhythm. An orbital station is a temporary shelter, having no home. If consider the film as a collection of images, one can draw a conclusion that the main characters try to escape from their own life, blindly following alien ideas, reluctance to solve the problems of our own reality.
The main characters' behavioral modes also confirm that they are ruled by their wishes to escape their earthly problems. Cooper refuses from his own life on the planet with his family for the sake of saving humanity. Searching for life on other planets, he loses his own. His children grow old and die. At the end of the film he is left alone with inanimate objects - a robot, spacecraft and space.
Cooper's daughter builds her life proceeding from misconception of her relationship with her father. Like her father, she denies everything that she has in her real life and relies on a myth. As a result, she is thrown into space, to the orbital station. The character. that is unlike them, is Cooper's son, who bases his life on reality, starting his own family and toils on the land.
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I won't take the final episodes into account because they are too idealistic for Nolan's planet. In my opinion, the real final is the one on the farm with Murph reading the message sent by her father from an alien reality, " Don't let me leave, Murph! ". The happy end is just a gift to the viewer who may not be ready to face up with the fact that SURVIVAL will not come from outside.
To my mind this is the profound meaning of the film, its real message. But the Interstellar planet is rich of meanings and implications, so each viewer is sure to find their own ones.
Together with the brilliant performance of the characters, all of whom seem to be cut out for their roles, the film is worth spending 169 minutes on. Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain managed to truly portray the pain of father and his daughter, whose supernatural bond comes up against disappointment, rage, disillusionment. I am not speaking for Ann Hathaway and her character, though, because this plot line seems to me raw and incomplete.
To crown it all, I should mention Hans Zimmer music, which penetrates the film, making it so piercing and powerful. The film is not easy to watch but it is thought-provoking and aimed at elaborate viewers. I would definitely recommend watching it not only to those whose favourite genre is dystopia.
TOP 100 WORKS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE FOR EXTRA READING
1. Ulysses, James Joyce (1922)
2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (1916)
4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1958)
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1932)
6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1929)
7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961)
8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1941)
9. Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence (1913)
10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939)
11. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry (1947)
12. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler (1903)
13. 1984, George Orwell (1949)
14. I, Claudius, Robert Graves (1934)
15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (1927)
16. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser (1925)
17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers (1940)
18. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
19. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)
20. Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)
21. Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow (1959)
22. Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara (1934)
23. U. S. A. (trilogy), John Dos Passos (1937—trilogy completed)
24. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson (1919)
25. A Passage to India, E. M. Forster (1924)
26. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James (1902)
27. The Ambassadors, Henry James (1903)
28. Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell (1935)
30. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford (1915)
31. Animal Farm, George Orwell (1946)
32. The Golden Bowl, Henry James (1904)
33. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1900)
34. A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh (1934)
35. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (1930)
36. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren (1946)
37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder (1927)
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38. Howards End, E. M. Forster (1910)
39. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin (1953)
40. The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene (1948)
41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1954)
42. Deliverance, James Dickey (1969)
43. A Dance to the Music of Time (series), Anthony
Powell (1975—series completed)
44. Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley (1928)
45. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (1926)
46. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad (1907)
47. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad(1904)
48. The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence (1915)
49. Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence (1921)
50. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller (1934)
51. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (1948)
52. Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth (1969)
53. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
54. Light in August, William Faulkner (1932)
55. On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
56. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett (1930)
57. Parade’s End, Ford Madox Ford (1950)
58. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920)
59. Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm (1911)
60. The Movie goer, Walker Percy (1961)
61. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather (1927)
62. From Here to Eternity, James Jones (1951)
63. The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever (1957)
64. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger (1951)
65. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (1962)
66. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
67. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1902)
68. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis (1920)
69. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1905)
70. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (1960—series
completed)
71. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes (1929)
72. A House for Mr. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul (1961)
73. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West (1939)
74. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (1929)
75. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh (1938)
76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (1961)
77. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce (1939)
78. Kim, Rudyard Kipling (1901)
79. A Room with a View, E. M. Forster (1908)
80. Brideshead Revisited, EvelynWaugh (1945)
81. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow (1953)
82. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner (1971)
83. A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul (1979)
84. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen (1938)
85. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad (1900)
86. Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow (1975)
87. The Old Wives’ Tale, Arnold Bennett (1908)
88. The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1903)
89. Loving, Henry Green (1945)
90. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie (1981)
91. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell (1933)
92. Iron weed, William Kennedy (1983)
93. The Magus, John Fowles (1966)
94. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (1966)
95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch (1954)
96. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron (1979)
97. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles (1949)
98. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain (1934)
99. The Ginger Man, J. P. Donleavy (1955)
100. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington (1918)
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