Christopher Nolan is not the type of director to giggle and smile, fact proven by (not so many) interviews and even by the themes he adopts in his movies. This does not necessarily imply that his films are devoid of any form of sarcasm or irony (remember John Lithgow as Donald in the space epic Interstellar), but that he usually tackles on more profound, be it philosophical or scientific subjects (Memento – 2000, The Prestige – 2006, Inception – 2010). But there is one video in which you will see Nolan smile, laugh out loud and even give out four letter words and we shall all give thanks to Stephen Colbert and his Report for such a treat.
It was the night of December 4 when the two sat down for a little movie-plot-space travel chit chat. Stephen Colbert cracked the joke as soon as he faced Christopher Nolan: ‘’I can’t tell whether you’re smart (pause for a little Nolan smile)… or whether you’re just English?’’ And the answer of the director proves to be as simple and as modest as it may. Of course, the host is just toying with your minds and sharing some more laughs to the audience, because he sure knows the answer to his rhetorical question, as he furthermore accuses Nolan for ‘’having him think’’ a little bit too much after every movie – again some Colbert self-irony. And then a Guardians of the Galaxy remark hits and all is shaded in laughter.
Beyond all the laughing and small talk, Stephen Colbert hides his intention of hinting at greater issues in the movie, all the smarts and the plot twists starting with the early scenes of the movie, the ones depicting a dying Earth and humanity and which trigger the idea of a necessary or possible life on a Planet different from Mother Earth. The initial context of the film finds people facing an ‘’agriculture blight’’… remember the thick layer of dust imposing on every surface at hand, including on the tables and dishes. In this Colbert video, Nolan shares that the scenes at the beginning of the movie – which depicted the reactions of the people towards the natural catastrophe – were not cinema-written and shot for the sole purpose of fiction. In fact, the scenes pertain to a Ken Burns’ documentary entitled The Dust Bowl (2012), a picture of the 1930s drought in North America and its connections to the Great Depression: “Those are real people. We drew it from Ken Burns’ documentary on the dust bowl which he very kindly let me use some excerpts from because even though it’s a science fiction film, I wanted the feeling of dread, the feeling of imbalance between the human race and the planet to be real and credible.”
Although some critics blamed Christopher Nolan for the ‘’scientific gaps’’ in the movie, Interstellar managed to portray a realistic context of a natural disaster (and Burns sure had his share in it), warm and close relationships between characters (due to some great actors) and the not-so-fictional possibility that sometime in the future, some other Planet apart from the Earth might get inhabited by the human race.