Movies Calling the Mayberry Movie Crew: Help Me Explain TENET (2020)

[Wilmer Digreux]

I am with you here. I had forgotten about the love epiphany thing in the blackhole. That only makes sense if as an introduction of the whole life after death theme. It‘s either that or Nolan pulled a Lost.

yep. not to mention when he's in the black hole he is the "ghost" from earlier in the movie.

 

[HenryFlower]

idk if i can trust anyone who doesn’t vibe w/ a movie that says “temporal pincer movement” w/ a straight face more than once.

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

yep. not to mention when he's in the black hole he is the "ghost" from earlier in the movie.

Which also didn‘t really make sense as he only had access to that weird diaporama 3D room for like 3 minutes (his time) before falling in the black hole. Which is what explains that he only managed to send these shit tier signals like the watch or the dust as he was all agitated but had no time. So….he‘s a very limited ghost. Why?

 

[Wilmer Digreux]

 

[Bullitt68]

OMG dude no. Everything about that scene is weird. Like the way all the people in the room act like bots, don‘t react to his presence and look like a mere background? All that white light in the room? I think that‘s him dying, bro.

Ok, I just rewatched Interstellar. My eyes are still crusty from the drying tears - Nolan really hit a home run here with the emotionality, such a powerful film - but my brain is working well enough to say that you're way off on this one. If you feel like interpreting the film like this - same as if people feel like interpreting the top not falling and Cobb being in limbo at the end of Inception - go for it, but it's not the film that Nolan made. Coop's not dead at the end of Interstellar. Per the film, that's literally impossible, otherwise humanity wouldn't exist. The tricky part is the evolution of the species part, but ironically Interstellar might make more sense...if you think about Tenet. No, I'm not trolling. You know the plot device in Tenet of a war between the future and the past with the future trying to reverse the entropy of the world because "their" world of the future is dying and they want to go backwards "back" to "our" world of the past? Same basic premise in Interstellar: Future humans were able to survive because Murph figured out how to get them off of Earth when the Earth was dying...except what she figured out was a message from her dad in the future communicating with her in the past, so rather than future people trying to destroy past people as in Tenet, it's future humans trying to ensure their survival by helping past humans in Interstellar.

Push comes to shove, both science fiction films are more fiction than science, but Interstellar makes more sense because there are less moving parts. Gravity is the key. Apparently it's powerful enough to not just bend but manipulate space and time, and apparently in the future we learn how to harness that power and create wormholes. You can't fuck with space-time willy-nilly, though, so to avoid paradoxes - and we know that Nolan loves paradoxes - they plant that wormhole near Saturn like a backstop, with Coop as the anomaly that ensures the five dimensions don't collapse.

Tl;Dr: Coop's alive and it's his and Murph's bond that not only brings them back together but that both bends and preserves space and time across every dimension thus saving humanity.

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

Ok, I just rewatched Interstellar. My eyes are still crusty from the drying tears - Nolan really hit a home run here with the emotionality, such a powerful film - but my brain is working well enough to say that you're way off on this one. If you feel like interpreting the film like this - same as if people feel like interpreting the top not falling and Cobb being in limbo at the end of Inception - go for it, but it's not the film that Nolan made. Coop's not dead at the end of Interstellar. Per the film, that's literally impossible, otherwise humanity wouldn't exist. The tricky part is the evolution of the species part, but ironically Interstellar might make more sense...if you think about Tenet. No, I'm not trolling. You know the plot device in Tenet of a war between the future and the past with the future trying to reverse the entropy of the world because "their" world of the future is dying and they want to go backwards "back" to "our" world of the past? Same basic premise in Interstellar: Future humans were able to survive because Murph figured out how to get them off of Earth when the Earth was dying...except what she figured out was a message from her dad in the future communicating with her in the past, so rather than future people trying to destroy past people as in Tenet, it's future humans trying to ensure their survival by helping past humans in Interstellar.

Push comes to shove, both science fiction films are more fiction than science, but Interstellar makes more sense because there are less moving parts. Gravity is the key. Apparently it's powerful enough to not just bend but manipulate space and time, and apparently in the future we learn how to harness that power and create wormholes. You can't fuck with space-time willy-nilly, though, so to avoid paradoxes - and we know that Nolan loves paradoxes - they plant that wormhole near Saturn like a backstop, with Coop as the anomaly that ensures the five dimensions don't collapse.

Tl;Dr: Coop's alive and it's his and Murph's bond that not only brings them back together but that both bends and preserves space and time across every dimension thus saving humanity.

No word on the weird scene with his old daughter? Or the whole „i finally figured it out, it‘s love“? Or the fact that in the end all he could do in the 4 dimension room was to provide these little signals with the watch or the dust, implying that it did work but only for a few minutes of his time (before dying then).

 

[Bullitt68]

No word on the weird scene with his old daughter? Or the whole „i finally figured it out, it‘s love“? Or the fact that in the end all he could do in the 4 dimension room was to provide these little signals with the watch or the dust, implying that it did work but only for a few minutes of his time (before dying then).

1) The scene with his old daughter isn't weird. Generally speaking, that's explained by relativity (and gravity). She experienced normal Earth time, so she aged normally. Coop experienced time differently through the wormhole and on the different planets with different gravitational strength, so he aged abnormally (to her in the film and to us watching). Not sure what's confusing you there. More specifically, you brought up the people seeming weird or like bots in the room. I'm not seeing whatever weirds you out. The family is there for her, because they've spent years (some decades) with her. Coop is just a story, and one that she repeatedly stresses to her dad when he returns that nobody believed. They just see a dude enter the room and then they give their mother/grandmother/aunt/great aunt her privacy. First, it may have been the case that they weren't informed who it was coming in, and I know if my great-great grandfather walked into a room I wouldn't recognize him. Second, it may also have been that they just don't have an emotional connection to him (why would they?) and they gave her privacy to have an emotional reconnection with him (which she had). I'm also not weirded out by the hospital area on a space station looking white and sterile. I'd be weirded out if it wasn't white and sterile.

2) Brand is the first one to voice the love theory and once Coop is in the memory room he connects the dots. That's actually perfectly motivated on the level of narrative and powerful on the levels of character and theme. It's not scientific fact, obviously, but that's why it's called science fiction.

3) What do you mean by that was "all he could do"? That's specifically what it was set up for him to do. He did what he was supposed to do. And the time thing is a non-issue when we go back to relativity and gravity.

What else is tripping you up? Throw it at me now while the movie's fresh in my head

 

[Adamant]

Tenet is Nolan's worst movie. Saw it twice. Shit was painful. Never need to see it again.

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

1) The scene with his old daughter isn't weird. Generally speaking, that's explained by relativity (and gravity). She experienced normal Earth time, so she aged normally. Coop experienced time differently through the wormhole and on the different planets with different gravitational strength, so he aged abnormally (to her in the film and to us watching). Not sure what's confusing you there. More specifically, you brought up the people seeming weird or like bots in the room. I'm not seeing whatever weirds you out. The family is there for her, because they've spent years (some decades) with her. Coop is just a story, and one that she repeatedly stresses to her dad when he returns that nobody believed. They just see a dude enter the room and then they give their mother/grandmother/aunt/great aunt her privacy. First, it may have been the case that they weren't informed who it was coming in, and I know if my great-great grandfather walked into a room I wouldn't recognize him. Second, it may also have been that they just don't have an emotional connection to him (why would they?) and they gave her privacy to have an emotional reconnection with him (which she had). I'm also not weirded out by the hospital area on a space station looking white and sterile. I'd be weirded out if it wasn't white and sterile.

2) Brand is the first one to voice the love theory and once Coop is in the memory room he connects the dots. That's actually perfectly motivated on the level of narrative and powerful on the levels of character and theme. It's not scientific fact, obviously, but that's why it's called science fiction.

3) What do you mean by that was "all he could do"? That's specifically what it was set up for him to do. He did what he was supposed to do. And the time thing is a non-issue when we go back to relativity and gravity.

What else is tripping you up? Throw it at me now while the movie's fresh in my head

Thank you for taking the time. No what s weirding me out is not the old daughter young father thing, that‘s logical and explained. What s weird is the reaction of the people in the room. Imagine the patriarch of the family who saved humanity walks in the room after time travel and risking his life in a black hole and all he gets is a vague smile as if he is bringing coffee ? No way Nolan messed up that scene that bad. It‘s way too off on a behavior perspective. That‘s in his mind.

What I mean with „all he could do“ is that the signals he gave were really weak. So weak that it‘s in extremis that the daughter figured it out randomly 20 years later almost by mistake. But we saw what happened in the 4D room. He had only a couple of minutes to figure something out in this huge room full of time frames so he improvised what he could. Why only a couple of minutes if he didn‘t die?

 

[Bullitt68]

What s weird is the reaction of the people in the room. Imagine the patriarch of the family who saved humanity walks in the room after time travel and risking his life in a black hole and all he gets is a vague smile as if he is bringing coffee ? No way Nolan messed up that scene that bad. It‘s way too off on a behavior perspective. That‘s in his mind.

I get where you're coming from, but I don't have a problem buying it. There are two ways of explaining that, as I mentioned. If nobody told them who was coming (remember Murph is like the fucking queen, so when the space station people found Coop they told her and then she could've told them not to tell anyone else) then it's easy to explain. This is my interpretation. Remember how nonplussed the doctor and nurse were with him when he woke up. The doctor treated him like a nobody and the nurse laughed when he had the gall to think that "Cooper Station" was named after him. They found an astronaut floating in space. They might not even know/believe the time travel/wormhole shit. They might think what everyone else thinks: That Murph figured everything out herself and saved the world and that her crazy shit about her dad was just in her head and the "inspiration" she used to figure things out. With everyone, including Murph's family, she is the important one. Coop is a memory and a name from long ago if that. Hence the line from Coop's wife, that the function of parents are to be memories for their kids. Coop is a memory, a ghost. I'm telling you, it works. But even if you don't buy this, even if you want to insist that the family knew who he was and what he did, I'd still buy them showing way more affection toward Murph and cautious/confused/respectful distance toward Coop, with whom nobody in that room except Murph actually has a relationship or emotional connection. Whichever way you come at it, it makes perfect sense for me.

What I mean with „all he could do“ is that the signals he gave were really weak. So weak that it‘s in extremis that the daughter figured it out randomly 20 years later almost by mistake. But we saw what happened in the 4D room. He had only a couple of minutes to figure something out in this huge room full of time frames so he improvised what he could. Why only a couple of minutes if he didn‘t die?

Remember the joke line in Tenet about needing to stop thinking linearly? Well, in a similar vein, you need to stop thinking in only our dimensions

In all seriousness, your confusion here is predicated on your not being one of the five-dimensional humans who evolved to the point where they could harness space and time the way that they do and create that tesseract. "They" opened that tesseract inside the wormhole for Coop. (Don't ask "how?" I have no answers for you there. This is just the mechanism that makes the plot make sense according to its logic, not necessarily to scientific fact outside the science fiction context.) Think of it like dropping a cell phone down to someone trapped in a cave. Silly example, I know, but it's similar to what's happening in that scene. As for what Coop does inside that memory box, time wasn't an issue. He wasn't playing Beat the Clock in that room. This is relativity again. Beyond the issue of time, which is a non-issue in the tesseract, the real issue is whether he can figure it out.* It could've taken him 10 seconds or 10 millennia "normal" time, but with the way that space and time have been harnessed, it'd be perceived and experienced instantaneously in Murph's room. (Time and space are relative, not absolute. That's key.) For another Nolan example, it's like the bomb going off in Oppenheimer but it taking a while for the sound to reach them. Light travels faster than sound, so they see the explosion before they hear it. It'd be wrong to say that they "happened" at different times. This is just a function of our perceptual apparatus. The light and the sound are from the same source and occurred at the same instant, the sound is just slower getting to us than the light. Same thing with Murph and Coop. It's not that Coop only has for as long as little Murph is looking at the books, or big Murph is holding the watch. Time (the year and age she is and the year and age he is) and space (where she is in her room and where Coop is behind the bookshelf in the tesseract) are relative. It doesn't matter how long it takes Coop to figure it out, it doesn't even matter how long it takes him to transmit the morse code message to the watch, what matters is that he figures it out and figures out a way to get the information to Murph. It's like "posterity" in Tenet: So long as it happens, it'll always happen. There's also more shit on gravity having worked on an object thereby transforming the object itself, so whether Murph has the watch in her room or in the NASA center, that second hand will be transmitting that morse code message forever because that's what Coop made happen "in the past" so that it'd happen "in the future."

As for Murph, it's not "randomly" that she figures it out. First, she'd always been the smartest one in the room. She knew Professor Brand was fucking up with his silly equation way before he admitted he was lying the whole time. Ever since she was a kid, she'd been "making fools of her teachers" as John Lithgow says. If anyone was going to figure it out, it was going to be her. "They" knew that, which is why "they" chose her, and "they" used her love for her father as the bridge between time and space. Now, it would've been much easier if Coop could've just yelled loud enough for Murph to hear him from inside the tesseract, or if he could've punched a hole in the tesseract wall and walked into her room in the past when she was a smart adult, but that's not how things work in the universe that Nolan established. Gravity is the most powerful force in the world, so he's able to knock books off the bookshelf and have them fall to the ground, he's able to use sand and wind to make coordinate patterns on the floor, and he's able to affect the watch. Second, as Coop tells TARS in the tesseract, she's going to come back for the watch because he gave it to her. Love is the bridge, it's that powerful force that transcends space and time, and it was powerful enough that even though Murph felt so betrayed by her dad and hated him so much for leaving, she was of course going to end up back in that house, in that room, and with that watch.

*A clever emotional bit is that before Coop figures things out, he's all in his feelings. He doesn't see himself and Murph in the past, see moments that he lived replaying like bad TV reruns, and instantly become rational science man. He sees the past and wants to go back, he wants to change the past for himself, he tries to get himself to stay (hence him spelling out "STAY" with the books). When Coop leaves and Murph is crying and giving him the cold shoulder, he says "Don't make me leave like this," but when Coop is in the tesseract watching this moment in time he's shouting at Murph "Don't let me leave." I'm welling up just typing this. That's some powerful, deeply human shit right there. He's a man out of time, a man with no place, truly floating in nothingness. He's made his choices, he's lost that time and he can never get it back, but he can make the ultimate sacrifice and accept that if it means that he can change time and space for his children, if he can do what he set out to do and save them, even if it means he loses everything. So he cries, he yells, he bangs on the wall, he gets out all of his emotions, and then all that's left is the mission, which he successfully completes. Heavy shit, man, and so devastatingly beautiful.

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

I get where you're coming from, but I don't have a problem buying it. There are two ways of explaining that, as I mentioned. If nobody told them who was coming (remember Murph is like the fucking queen, so when the space station people found Coop they told her and then she could've told them not to tell anyone else) then it's easy to explain. This is my interpretation. Remember how nonplussed the doctor and nurse were with him when he woke up. The doctor treated him like a nobody and the nurse laughed when he had the gall to think that "Cooper Station" was named after him. They found an astronaut floating in space. They might not even know/believe the time travel/wormhole shit. They might think what everyone else thinks: That Murph figured everything out herself and saved the world and that her crazy shit about her dad was just in her head and the "inspiration" she used to figure things out. With everyone, including Murph's family, she is the important one. Coop is a memory and a name from long ago if that. Hence the line from Coop's wife, that the function of parents are to be memories for their kids. Coop is a memory, a ghost. I'm telling you, it works. But even if you don't buy this, even if you want to insist that the family knew who he was and what he did, I'd still buy them showing way more affection toward Murph and cautious/confused/respectful distance toward Coop, with whom nobody in that room except Murph actually has a relationship or emotional connection. Whichever way you come at it, it makes perfect sense for me.



Remember the joke line in Tenet about needing to stop thinking linearly? Well, in a similar vein, you need to stop thinking in only our dimensions

In all seriousness, your confusion here is predicated on your not being one of the five-dimensional humans who evolved to the point where they could harness space and time the way that they do and create that tesseract. "They" opened that tesseract inside the wormhole for Coop. (Don't ask "how?" I have no answers for you there. This is just the mechanism that makes the plot make sense according to its logic, not necessarily to scientific fact outside the science fiction context.) Think of it like dropping a cell phone down to someone trapped in a cave. Silly example, I know, but it's similar to what's happening in that scene. As for what Coop does inside that memory box, time wasn't an issue. He wasn't playing Beat the Clock in that room. This is relativity again. Beyond the issue of time, which is a non-issue in the tesseract, the real issue is whether he can figure it out.* It could've taken him 10 seconds or 10 millennia "normal" time, but with the way that space and time have been harnessed, it'd be perceived and experienced instantaneously in Murph's room. (Time and space are relative, not absolute. That's key.) For another Nolan example, it's like the bomb going off in Oppenheimer but it taking a while for the sound to reach them. Light travels faster than sound, so they see the explosion before they hear it. It'd be wrong to say that they "happened" at different times. This is just a function of our perceptual apparatus. The light and the sound are from the same source and occurred at the same instant, the sound is just slower getting to us than the light. Same thing with Murph and Coop. It's not that Coop only has for as long as little Murph is looking at the books, or big Murph is holding the watch. Time (the year and age she is and the year and age he is) and space (where she is in her room and where Coop is behind the bookshelf in the tesseract) are relative. It doesn't matter how long it takes Coop to figure it out, it doesn't even matter how long it takes him to transmit the morse code message to the watch, what matters is that he figures it out and figures out a way to get the information to Murph. It's like "posterity" in Tenet: So long as it happens, it'll always happen. There's also more shit on gravity having worked on an object thereby transforming the object itself, so whether Murph has the watch in her room or in the NASA center, that second hand will be transmitting that morse code message forever because that's what Coop made happen "in the past" so that it'd happen "in the future."

As for Murph, it's not "randomly" that she figures it out. First, she'd always been the smartest one in the room. She knew Professor Brand was fucking up with his silly equation way before he admitted he was lying the whole time. Ever since she was a kid, she'd been "making fools of her teachers" as John Lithgow says. If anyone was going to figure it out, it was going to be her. "They" knew that, which is why "they" chose her, and "they" used her love for her father as the bridge between time and space. Now, it would've been much easier if Coop could've just yelled loud enough for Murph to hear him from inside the tesseract, or if he could've punched a hole in the tesseract wall and walked into her room in the past when she was a smart adult, but that's not how things work in the universe that Nolan established. Gravity is the most powerful force in the world, so he's able to knock books off the bookshelf and have them fall to the ground, he's able to use sand and wind to make coordinate patterns on the floor, and he's able to affect the watch. Second, as Coop tells TARS in the tesseract, she's going to come back for the watch because he gave it to her. Love is the bridge, it's that powerful force that transcends space and time, and it was powerful enough that even though Murph felt so betrayed by her dad and hated him so much for leaving, she was of course going to end up back in that house, in that room, and with that watch.

*A clever emotional bit is that before Coop figures things out, he's all in his feelings. He doesn't see himself and Murph in the past, see moments that he lived replaying like bad TV reruns, and instantly become rational science man. He sees the past and wants to go back, he wants to change the past for himself, he tries to get himself to stay (hence him spelling out "STAY" with the books). When Coop leaves and Murph is crying and giving him the cold shoulder, he says "Don't make me leave like this," but when Coop is in the tesseract watching this moment in time he's shouting at Murph "Don't let me leave." I'm welling up just typing this. That's some powerful, deeply human shit right there. He's a man out of time, a man with no place, truly floating in nothingness. He's made his choices, he's lost that time and he can never get it back, but he can make the ultimate sacrifice and accept that if it means that he can change time and space for his children, if he can do what he set out to do and save them, even if it means he loses everything. So he cries, he yells, he bangs on the wall, he gets out all of his emotions, and then all that's left is the mission, which he successfully completes. Heavy shit, man, and so devastatingly beautiful.

Dude that‘s some to unpack. I ll get back to you when I have time over the next days. I might even give Interstellar another viewing. I am enjoying this convo. And BTW I think Interstellar is a masterpiece and I get wet eyes just talking about it, despite what I think are plotholes.

 

[Bullitt68]

Dude that‘s some to unpack. I ll get back to you when I have time over the next days. I might even give Interstellar another viewing. I am enjoying this convo. And BTW I think Interstellar is a masterpiece and I get wet eyes just talking about it, despite what I think are plotholes.

No worries. Ironically, in a thread that I created for someone to explain Tenet to me, I'm explaining Interstellar to you. I am to you for Interstellar what I'd hoped someone would be to me for Tenet. I'm weirdly Coop in this scenario: You created your Interstellar thread a while back and I created my Tenet thread more recently, and while I thought that my mission was to have Tenet explained to me, it turns out my real mission was to explain Interstellar to you

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

No worries. Ironically, in a thread that I created for someone to explain Tenet to me, I'm explaining Interstellar to you. I am to you for Interstellar what I'd hoped someone would be to me for Tenet. I'm weirdly Coop in this scenario: You created your Interstellar thread a while back and I created my Tenet thread more recently, and while I thought that my mission was to have Tenet explained to me, it turns out my real mission was to explain Interstellar to you

No worries. Ironically, in a thread that I created for someone to explain Tenet to me, I'm explaining Interstellar to you. I am to you for Interstellar what I'd hoped someone would be to me for Tenet. I'm weirdly Coop in this scenario: You created your Interstellar thread a while back and I created my Tenet thread more recently, and while I thought that my mission was to have Tenet explained to me, it turns out my real mission was to explain Inters

So you‘ll be my Coop? Damn that sounds super gh4y. BTW don‘t start peeking in my room if you enter that 4D diaporama room. Some things are better left unseen.

BTW I thought about what you wrote and it could make sense. However, here is the thing:
- in his run in the 4D diaporama room which lasted roughly 5‘ of Coop‘s time, he has access to all his daughter‘s life, frame by frame. But he randomly looked at the slides in her room as he had no idea wtf was going on. Then, all he figured out was the morse code on the watch and the dust, so he gave a few signals and fell off the black hole. I say he died. You say he survived and thus, found a way to return to the blackhole. This is how he provided all the morse code, otherwise there is no way he could provide anything meaningful in his first run in the 4D diaporama room because we saw him stay there 5‘ HIS time, and he was also super agitated.

- OK so he figures it out and returns in the 4D Diaporama. Why then continue the nonsense on the watch when it‘s almost too late? Why not choose an earlier frame on his daughter‘s life and find better ways of communicating ?

 

[Bullitt68]

So you‘ll be my Coop? Damn that sounds super gh4y. BTW don‘t start peeking in my room if you enter that 4D diaporama room. Some things are better left unseen.

in his run in the 4D diaporama room which lasted roughly 5‘ of Coop‘s time, he has access to all his daughter‘s life, frame by frame. But he randomly looked at the slides in her room as he had no idea wtf was going on. Then, all he figured out was the morse code on the watch and the dust, so he gave a few signals and fell off the black hole. I say he died. You say he survived and thus, found a way to return to the blackhole. This is how he provided all the morse code, otherwise there is no way he could provide anything meaningful in his first run in the 4D diaporama room because we saw him stay there 5‘ HIS time, and he was also super agitated.

- OK so he figures it out and returns in the 4D Diaporama. Why then continue the nonsense on the watch when it‘s almost too late? Why not choose an earlier frame on his daughter‘s life and find better ways of communicating ?

I think I can answer this, but I'm thrown off a bit by your references to his "return" to the black hole. Not sure what you're talking about there. He's only in the tesseract once, and the tesseract is inside the black hole. That aside, there are two points here that I think I can clarify.

1) I'm not clear myself on what all is IN that tesseract. There's the bit about how "they" knew that Murph was the key but they couldn't pinpoint a "eureka" moment in time, which would lead us to believe that Murph's entire life, i.e. every single moment she's ever lived, is inside that tesseract, but only Coop would know based on how much he loves his daughter which moment(s) would count and so he'd be the bridge. This leads me to believe that the tesseract in Interstellar becomes for Coop like the dream elevator in Inception with all of Cobb's memories: Everything in the tesseract that Coop sees and is drawn to are the moments that stick with him most profoundly, namely when he and Murph found NASA (which is what created the occasion for him to leave her) and when he left (which is his biggest regret). In Inception, Cobb explains that all the memories in his dream elevator are moments he wishes he could change, either moments where he left when he wanted to stay or moments where something happened to someone that he wants to prevent/undo. In Interstellar, it's the same thing. Coop starts by trying to talk to himself (telling himself, or telling Murph to tell him, to stay) but he realizes that he's not meant to be talking to himself, he's meant to be talking to Murph (he's her ghost). And so of course it's during those moments when she was trying to figure out what the ghost was saying that he'll be able now in the tesseract to communicate to her the information from TARS that will help her save the world. That's why it had to be those moments: He can't literally go back and re-live the past for a "do over," nor can he just pop in at any moment that she's lived after that since he never lived any such moments with her; he can only go back to what had already happened between him and Murph and use gravity to make those moments from Murph's past count enough to where she'd remember them in the future as an adult.

2) Related to the first point, beyond when Coop chose to communicate with Murph (those moments from her childhood when she was talking to her ghost), you're thinking about how he chose to communicate with her (using gravity to create a morse code message on the watch). If you can think of a "better" way of communicating with the past from inside a black hole, I'm all ears, but I think using gravity is pretty damn cool and clever, plus it has the benefit of working, so why worry about a "better" way when the way that they had did the job? Again, it's not like he just wasn't yelling loud enough. Gravity was the answer.

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

I think I can answer this, but I'm thrown off a bit by your references to his "return" to the black hole. Not sure what you're talking about there. He's only in the tesseract once, and the tesseract is inside the black hole. That aside, there are two points here that I think I can clarify.

1) I'm not clear myself on what all is IN that tesseract. There's the bit about how "they" knew that Murph was the key but they couldn't pinpoint a "eureka" moment in time, which would lead us to believe that Murph's entire life, i.e. every single moment she's ever lived, is inside that tesseract, but only Coop would know based on how much he loves his daughter which moment(s) would count and so he'd be the bridge. This leads me to believe that the tesseract in Interstellar becomes for Coop like the dream elevator in Inception with all of Cobb's memories: Everything in the tesseract that Coop sees and is drawn to are the moments that stick with him most profoundly, namely when he and Murph found NASA (which is what created the occasion for him to leave her) and when he left (which is his biggest regret). In Inception, Cobb explains that all the memories in his dream elevator are moments he wishes he could change, either moments where he left when he wanted to stay or moments where something happened to someone that he wants to prevent/undo. In Interstellar, it's the same thing. Coop starts by trying to talk to himself (telling himself, or telling Murph to tell him, to stay) but he realizes that he's not meant to be talking to himself, he's meant to be talking to Murph (he's her ghost). And so of course it's during those moments when she was trying to figure out what the ghost was saying that he'll be able now in the tesseract to communicate to her the information from TARS that will help her save the world. That's why it had to be those moments: He can't literally go back and re-live the past for a "do over," nor can he just pop in at any moment that she's lived after that since he never lived any such moments with her; he can only go back to what had already happened between him and Murph and use gravity to make those moments from Murph's past count enough to where she'd remember them in the future as an adult.

2) Related to the first point, beyond when Coop chose to communicate with Murph (those moments from her childhood when she was talking to her ghost), you're thinking about how he chose to communicate with her (using gravity to create a morse code message on the watch). If you can think of a "better" way of communicating with the past from inside a black hole, I'm all ears, but I think using gravity is pretty damn cool and clever, plus it has the benefit of working, so why worry about a "better" way when the way that they had did the job? Again, it's not like he just wasn't yelling loud enough. Gravity was the answer.

I disagree here. We saw what Cooper did when he was in the tesseract. He had no time to morse code the whole data. You can tell that the morse code thing lasted a long time. It means he returned.

1) i think he has access to all frames of his daughter s life. If not, how could he communicate with her through the watch when she was an adult? Communication is from the future to one moment in the past. So when we see her listening to her watch as an adult, it‘s becsuse Cooper picked up that specific frame and influenced it.

2) the daughter figured it out by complete accident 20 years later so it almost didn‘t work. He did the watch thing and the dust thing because that‘s all he figured out at the moment.

 

[Bullitt68]

I disagree here. We saw what Cooper did when he was in the tesseract. He had no time to morse code the whole data. You can tell that the morse code thing lasted a long time. It means he returned.

You're still thinking in absolute terms, dude. Time is relative. He wasn't on a timer, he wasn't playing Beat the Clock, and he certainly wasn't "in sync" with any of those moments from Murph's past. See if this helps explain shit on the time front: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation.

1) i think he has access to all frames of his daughter s life. If not, how could he communicate with her through the watch when she was an adult? Communication is from the future to one moment in the past. So when we see her listening to her watch as an adult, it‘s becsuse Cooper picked up that specific frame and influenced it.

No, you've got the timelines mixed up. In Murph's timeline, that watch has been morse coding from the moment she put it on the shelf as a child to when she realized what the message was as an adult. This is what TARS meant when he cautioned Coop against transmitting such abstract information to a child so young. Coop wasn't transmitting it to Murph as a child, he was banking on the fact that Murph would come back for the watch at some point as an adult, realize that the second hand wasn't just skipping around broken but was transmitting a message, and then would be able to save the world. In other words, he wasn't communicating with her through the watch when she was an adult. You can even see in the scene when he's transmitting the message, Murph is a kid sitting on her bed. Once her dad left, she discarded the watch by placing it on the bookshelf rather than wearing it, and Coop used that moment from her past, when the watch was on the bookshelf and thus subject to his manipulation through gravity, to transmit the data. There's even a moment when Murph is unpacking the boxes when she sees the watch, sees the second hand flickering, but ignores it. That means that that watch had been sitting there in that box for decades ticking that message away, waiting for her to discover it and translate it.

2) the daughter figured it out by complete accident 20 years later so it almost didn‘t work. He did the watch thing and the dust thing because that‘s all he figured out at the moment.

Again, "that's all" is like postulating a "better" way of communicating. Can you give me a "better" way of communicating than using gravity from inside a black hole?!?!?! That's fucking amazing, and it worked! What would've/could've been better? You're also missing the emotional element. (This aspect is touched on more explicitly in Tenet, when Pattinson says "What's happened, happened, which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world.") Coop has faith that for as angry as his daughter was when she discarded that watch as a child, she'd come back to it as an adult. Why? Because he gave it to her. Because underneath all of her betrayal and sadness, there was, and is, and will forever be love. Love is what allowed Coop to be Murph's ghost, and love is what brought Murph back to Coop and the watch. Saying that it "almost didn't work" is like saying that Ken Shamrock almost didn't submit Dan Severn at UFC 6. Sure, it took him two guillotine attempts, just like Coop had to encode the message when she was a child only to be decoded once she was an adult, but he knew that Severn would go for a double, he knew that he'd leave his neck exposed, and he knew that he'd be able to win with a guillotine...and that's exactly how it played out. It's silly to say that he should've done it differently when what he did worked to a T. He would've been stupid to expect that he could beat every opponent by countering a double with a guillotine, but he didn't expect that: He just knew Severn and knew how to beat him and he was right. Coop knew his daughter, he knew how to reach her, and he was right. What more is there?

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

You're still thinking in absolute terms, dude. Time is relative. He wasn't on a timer, he wasn't playing Beat the Clock, and he certainly wasn't "in sync" with any of those moments from Murph's past. See if this helps explain shit on the time front: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation.



No, you've got the timelines mixed up. In Murph's timeline, that watch has been morse coding from the moment she put it on the shelf as a child to when she realized what the message was as an adult. This is what TARS meant when he cautioned Coop against transmitting such abstract information to a child so young. Coop wasn't transmitting it to Murph as a child, he was banking on the fact that Murph would come back for the watch at some point as an adult, realize that the second hand wasn't just skipping around broken but was transmitting a message, and then would be able to save the world. In other words, he wasn't communicating with her through the watch when she was an adult. You can even see in the scene when he's transmitting the message, Murph is a kid sitting on her bed. Once her dad left, she discarded the watch by placing it on the bookshelf rather than wearing it, and Coop used that moment from her past, when the watch was on the bookshelf and thus subject to his manipulation through gravity, to transmit the data. There's even a moment when Murph is unpacking the boxes when she sees the watch, sees the second hand flickering, but ignores it. That means that that watch had been sitting there in that box for decades ticking that message away, waiting for her to discover it and translate it.



Again, "that's all" is like postulating a "better" way of communicating. Can you give me a "better" way of communicating than using gravity from inside a black hole?!?!?! That's fucking amazing, and it worked! What would've/could've been better? You're also missing the emotional element. (This aspect is touched on more explicitly in Tenet, when Pattinson says "What's happened, happened, which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world.") Coop has faith that for as angry as his daughter was when she discarded that watch as a child, she'd come back to it as an adult. Why? Because he gave it to her. Because underneath all of her betrayal and sadness, there was, and is, and will forever be love. Love is what allowed Coop to be Murph's ghost, and love is what brought Murph back to Coop and the watch. Saying that it "almost didn't work" is like saying that Ken Shamrock almost didn't submit Dan Severn at UFC 6. Sure, it took him two guillotine attempts, just like Coop had to encode the message when she was a child only to be decoded once she was an adult, but he knew that Severn would go for a double, he knew that he'd leave his neck exposed, and he knew that he'd be able to win with a guillotine...and that's exactly how it played out. It's silly to say that he should've done it differently when what he did worked to a T. He would've been stupid to expect that he could beat every opponent by countering a double with a guillotine, but he didn't expect that: He just knew Severn and knew how to beat him and he was right. Coop knew his daughter, he knew how to reach her, and he was right. What more is there?

Ok let me explain where I think you are wrong.
Under the assumption that we saw on screen the time Coop spent in the 4D diaporama, and that he didn‘t come back to the 4D diaporama:
A-he spent a few minutes HIS time in there
B- time relativity or not, Coop didn‘t become a super human in these 5 minutes. There is only so much he did. And that‘s to pick a couple frames at random, and to influence shit using gravity, but he did it live on that time frame. One second of HIS time is one second in THAT specific time frame. In other words he picks a frame, presses play, and influences it.
That s how I think it works.

C therefore when daughter is an adult, and picks up the watch to write down the code, it means that Coop has been trasmitting to it from another frame 20 years later. Since we didn‘t see that happening, it means he returned to the 4D diaporama.

D-Coop essentially uploaded enormous amounts of info through the morse code. It took potentially years. He cannot have possibly done that during the time we saw him in there as again. We saw that Coop remained very „human“ in there and did what he could.

E - the watch 20 years later was not repeating shit transmitted to years 20 years later. Time travelling cannot alter the mechanism of a watch and invent a saving mechanism. Coop was transmitting „live“ but in frame 20 years later. We didn‘t see him do that. It‘s implied.

This is the only way this can work I think.

 

[Bullitt68]

Ok let me explain where I think you are wrong.
Under the assumption that we saw on screen the time Coop spent in the 4D diaporama, and that he didn‘t come back to the 4D diaporama:
A-he spent a few minutes HIS time in there
B- time relativity or not, Coop didn‘t become a super human in these 5 minutes. There is only so much he did. And that‘s to pick a couple frames at random, and to influence shit using gravity, but he did it live on that time frame. One second of HIS time is one second in THAT specific time frame. In other words he picks a frame, presses play, and influences it.
That s how I think it works.

C therefore when daughter is an adult, and picks up the watch to write down the code, it means that Coop has been trasmitting to it from another frame 20 years later. Since we didn‘t see that happening, it means he returned to the 4D diaporama.

D-Coop essentially uploaded enormous amounts of info through the morse code. It took potentially years. He cannot have possibly done that during the time we saw him in there as again. We saw that Coop remained very „human“ in there and did what he could.

E - the watch 20 years later was not repeating shit transmitted to years 20 years later. Time travelling cannot alter the mechanism of a watch and invent a saving mechanism. Coop was transmitting „live“ but in frame 20 years later. We didn‘t see him do that. It‘s implied.

This is the only way this can work I think.

Either one of us is wrong or neither of us is smart enough to know what's actually happening in that scene, but I'm going to bank on the former and disagree with you. The one thing that I'm sure about: He was in the tesseract once. For the rest:

1) Regarding the morse code, remember that it's essentially Murph and the Earth folks needing the final piece of the puzzle, not a whole entire puzzle. Murph and Co. need quantum data from inside the black hole, which is why Coop sends TARS in there. Murph and Co. have a lot of the pieces of the puzzle from over half a century of observation of the "gravitational anomalies" and the wormhole. What TARS translates into morse code for Coop and what Coop transmits to Murph via the watch is that last piece of the puzzle, the quantum data, which Murph uses to figure out how to save them. Are you clear on/do you agree with this?

2) Regarding the watch, we're back to Tenet land where you're thinking linearly. Remember, five dimensions. Do you remember how inside the tesseract the way that he transmits the message is like he's strumming the string of a harp? Think of it like that. That string runs through ALL of space and time. Coop manipulates gravity when Murph is a child and fucks with the watch, and then that echoes through time the way that the plucking of a string sends out a soundwave through space. He does it once and then it happens forever, across all dimensions, i.e. all space-time. The morse ticking isn't limited by the normal flow of time (time is relative) and instead functionally "loops." The watch is still (forever) ticking out the morse code because the transmission is a manipulation of gravity and of space-time. Are you clear on/do you agree with this?

 

[KBE6EKCTAH_CCP]

Either one of us is wrong or neither of us is smart enough to know what's actually happening in that scene, but I'm going to bank on the former and disagree with you. The one thing that I'm sure about: He was in the tesseract once. For the rest:

1) Regarding the morse code, remember that it's essentially Murph and the Earth folks needing the final piece of the puzzle, not a whole entire puzzle. Murph and Co. need quantum data from inside the black hole, which is why Coop sends TARS in there. Murph and Co. have a lot of the pieces of the puzzle from over half a century of observation of the "gravitational anomalies" and the wormhole. What TARS translates into morse code for Coop and what Coop transmits to Murph via the watch is that last piece of the puzzle, the quantum data, which Murph uses to figure out how to save them. Are you clear on/do you agree with this?

2) Regarding the watch, we're back to Tenet land where you're thinking linearly. Remember, five dimensions. Do you remember how inside the tesseract the way that he transmits the message is like he's strumming the string of a harp? Think of it like that. That string runs through ALL of space and time. Coop manipulates gravity when Murph is a child and fucks with the watch, and then that echoes through time the way that the plucking of a string sends out a soundwave through space. He does it once and then it happens forever, across all dimensions, i.e. all space-time. The morse ticking isn't limited by the normal flow of time (time is relative) and instead functionally "loops." The watch is still (forever) ticking out the morse code because the transmission is a manipulation of gravity and of space-time. Are you clear on/do you agree with this?

All right, I am not saying that I disagree and I am going to assume your two points are correct. But the elephant in the room remains. We saw what happened in Coop‘s five minutes in the tesseract. He transmitted morse code manually. How much quantum data can Coop transmit in 5 minutes? Since we saw on screen all the time he spent in the tesseract?

 

[Bullitt68]

All right, I am not saying that I disagree and I am going to assume your two points are correct. But the elephant in the room remains. We saw what happened in Coop‘s five minutes in the tesseract. He transmitted morse code manually. How much quantum data can Coop transmit in 5 minutes? Since we saw on screen all the time he spent in the tesseract?

This is strategically vague. Not impossible, mind you, but not specified. This is where Nolan gives himself some (science fiction, emphasis on fiction) wiggle room. I have no idea what the information is that is transmitted to begin with, much less what the information is like when rendered into Morse code. But we don't (at least, I don't) need this specified for the scene to work and for the internal logic of the film to be preserved. And, once more, time is relative. Whatever you are perceiving as "5 minutes" is NOT what we perceive as 5 minutes. For all we know, it took Coop what we perceive as 5 minutes, or 5 hours, or 5 decades, or 5 millennia. Time is not only relative, it's functionally IRRELEVANT in that tesseract. Think of it like when time is "paused" in a basketball game when there is a foul. There is technically no time running, but the player can still shoot those foul shots and effect the score. It doesn't matter whether it takes him five seconds or five minutes, time has been functionally "stopped" for him to take those free throws. No matter how long by our measurement of time Coop was in there, the effects will be perceived in Murph's experience on Earth.