Open AccessSeeing and Interpreting Visions of the Next Age in Interstellar
Author(s) -
Nancy E. Wright
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
the journal of religion and film
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1092-1311
DOI - 10.32873/uno.dc.jrf.26.01.51
Subject(s) - vision , interpretation (philosophy) , representation (politics) , prologue , literature , art , reflexivity , art history , history , philosophy , sociology , anthropology , theology , politics , linguistics , political science , law
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) uses multiple styles of cinematography – documentary, painterly and expressionistic – to guide interpretation of its apocalyptic review of history. Within the prologue and epilogue of the science fiction film, clips from interviews originally filmed for Ken Burns’s The Dust Bowl (2012) invite questions about how to interpret documentary, revisionist and eschatological reviews of history. Cinematography functions as a self-reflexive cue to spectators within and outside the mise-en-scène to engage in eschatological interpretation. The representation of spectatorship and vision reveals the challenge of interpreting prophetic visions of the last things and the next age, which are conventions of the apocalypse genre.