Interstellar is one of the best movies I’ve seen during the last years. Nolan uses one of the best poems written in the second half of the 20th century to compare the travel into space with being confronted with the darkness of death. Both is unknown to the traveller and both might be the end. While Dylan Thomas wrote the poem for a dying father, Christopher Nolan uses is as a metaphor for his main character Coopers last journey into the blackness and unknown spheres of space. Philosophical interpreted his time on earth was just the preparation for the things lying in front of him, which goes hand in hand with the Christian interpretation that the existence on earth is just a stage before the eternal life that follows after death. With traveling through space and time this eternal life is suddenly in reach for humanity- the solution for the conflict between Christian believes and science. But there are still enough conflicts to discuss about. Read the poem, watch the movie. It might be controversial but it is amazing piece of art and philosophy. I could go on and on…and I’m not done thinking of it yet 🙂

Dylan, Thomas: The Poems, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London 1978.