Oppenheimer, Interstellar, and Murphy’s Law

Another one for Tyler

After a few of my children and I finished Oppenheimer last month, we followed it up by watching Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s intergalatic epic from 10 years back. My initial viewing in 2014 was mixed at best, so I was curious to see if it had improved with time.

Spoiler warning: it hasn’t. To be sure, it is as incredibly gripping as ever—even though I knew what was going to happen, I could barely break away from an almost 3 hour movie to pop the popcorn—and I am always touched by the beautiful strangeness of a young father meeting his aging daughter. But there’s no secret wormhole that will allow you to space travel around its flaws. One week before the most important expedition in human history, and NASA decides to hand over the keys to a deadbeat Matthew McConaughey because he happened to stumble upon their compound? “We would’ve gone ahead anyways.” So nice of you to make room! Of course, that type of careful attention to planning helps explain why they decided to put all their eggs in the basket of Michael Caine figuring out the most crucial math problem ever, never realizing that in fact he was concealing failure from everyone. Whoopsie! About McConaughey as Cooper: it would’ve been nice if he had a setting between “cynical-yet-earnest drawler” and “hysterical parent.” Remember the lesson from the show Lost: a parent shouting their kid’s name as loudly and as often as possible does not riveting drama make.

Still, it’s a movie with ideas, gonzo as they may be. What struck me most was how, comparing Interstellar with Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s philosophical vision has transformed these past 10 years. The two films share many parallels: they are, for instance, both stories of American men rousing themselves to save the world by pushing beyond the scientific frontier (interesting how Matt Damon shows up as a complicating factor in both of these missions). Where they differ is over the question of existential optimism. Interstellar, in one of its many philosophical asides,¹ has Cooper’s daughter Murphy grumble about being named after something so pessimistic as Murphy’s Law.² Cooper insists that Murphy’s law does not mean that something bad will always happen. The adage works both ways: if something good can happen, that will happen too. That “not-just-can-do-but-must-do” attitude explains (but does not justify) lines from later in the film, like when Anne Hathaway shouts, as Cooper tries to steer their space station out of orbital burn-up, “It’s not possible!”, only for Cooper to deadpan “No. It’s necessary!”³ This optimism becomes intertwined with Interstellar’s fascination with the survival instinct, in which humanity’s drive to survive wills its own rescue. A future humanity creating a multi-dimensional wormhole and blackhole so that humanity in the past can save that future humanity is as close as you can get to literally pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. A darker version of this instinct is manifested in Matt Damon’s Dr. “Mann”⁴ , who is willing to risk all of human existence to extend his life a few more years. But through sheer pluck, Cooper manages to dodge Mann’s selfishness and keep humanity’s hopes alive. The species is greater than any single one of its members. Life finds a way.

Oppenheimer is also a reflection on Murphy’s Law, but this time, Dr. Mann gets his revenge. Instead of humanity willing itself to safety, it has, in pursuit of safety, set itself on a path towards annihilation. Oppenheimer and the other American leaders again and again justify building the bomb by in light of some looming threat: first the Germans, then the Japanese, then the Russians. Peace is always just beyond the horizon of war. Except this time, it’s a nuclear horizon, and there is nothing beyond that. The final defeat of the Nazis that Oppenheimer was aiming for has spiraled into a never-ending arms race that threatens to spiral out of control. At multiple points in the film, we see Oppenheimer envisioning nuclear holocaust: cities on a Russian map being wiped out, rockets streaking across the sky in search of population centers to obliterate, pillars of smoke riddling the cloudscape. As I mentioned in my last post, when these moments fixate on Oppenheimer’s moral turmoil, the stakes feel lower than the film intends. But Oppenheimer can also stand in as an avatar for our current anxieties over nuclear weapons: just as he watches blankly as his creation is crated and carried off by anonymous soldiers, so too do our political fortunes feel beyond our control, in the hands of blustering leaders who appear not to appreciate the gravity of their responsibility. This helplessness is the opposite of Interstellar’s confidence: If nuclear weapons exist, then given enough time, they will be used. The imagined holocaust is not just a nightmare of Oppenheimer’s psyche, but a warning from the future. War finds a way.

Maybe the remaining question is which philosophical vision is most compelling. Interstellar’s optimism is certainly more inspiring, but its leaps of cinematic logic reveals its vision to be, in the end, quixotic. There’s science-fiction that strains credulity, and then there’s Matthew McConaughey saving the world by shoving books off a shelf. The historical reality of Oppenheimer, on the other hand, is far more grounded in reality. Whether or not humanity will ultimately rid itself from this Earth in nuclear annihilation, we have already caught a glimpse, in the devestation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what such an event might look like. We might hope for Interstellar’s version of Murphy’s Law, but we can’t help but admitting that Oppenheimer presents a powerful counterargument: more than wormholes and black holes, nuclear war surely can happen because it did happen.

1. You’ll never convince me its dialogue wasn’t written by philosophy undergrads.

2. I love how Cooper doesn’t deny this—he really did name his daughter after an adage! What a champ.

3. Maybe McCounaghey’s casting was also a product of Murphy’s Law; which other actor could’ve said that with a straight face?

4. I mean, come on.