![]() It’s a movie that reveals more the second time you watch it, and I think it would reveal more even the fifth time. Or at least I thought that would be the case, but somehow Coherence has all of that too. ![]() If the author can precisely control every line of dialogue, they can work in more nuances, more double meaning, more foreshadowing, and have a tighter plot in the end. Having the whole thing improvised like that might make it feel “more real” (and I think it does), but this would be at the cost of clever scripting and plotting. That’s an interesting experiment when it comes to acting and filmmaking, and it didn’t have the result I expected. Instead, they are genuinely experiencing those events and they are genuinely talking to each other about what it means and what they should do about it. Each actor was told what their character would know at that point and given a page of notes from the director such as “you really want to go outside” or “you want to tell a story about X thing.” The actors did not know what events would happen around them during each scene. They aren’t reciting lines of a script to each other because there is no exact script. There’s a reason that the characters in Coherence talk to each other in a believable way: because they are actually talking to each other. Coherence, by contrast, takes one leap of fantasy-inspired-by-science then follows its own rules well and has its characters think about their situation in a smarter fashion than the awful dialogue in Interstellar. Interstellar is trying so incredibly hard to be legit science that its missteps are cringeworthy and difficult to watch. You can make a character look realistic or cartoony, but if it’s almost realistic, it’s really uncomfortable to look at. In visual arts, the term uncanny valley refers to a character that’s just human enough to look kind of realistic, yet just “wrong” enough to be creepy and scary. Interstellar is in the uncanny valley of science. The irony here is that Coherence is a much smarter film. ![]() It explores the idea of multiple universes in a way that’s very interesting as a story, but that doesn’t make sense as hard science. Wikipedia says: “The resulting visual effect provided Thorne with new insight into the effects of gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes, and will lead to the creation of two scientific papers, one for the astrophysics community and one for the computer graphics community.”Ĭoherence, on the other hand, took the (real) idea of parallel universes from quantum physics and used it as a fantasy element. Physicist Kip Thorne was an advisor on the film, and he had the special effects team create the visuals for the black hole using a complex set of real physics equations. Interstellar tried very hard to do science right. Or inspired by something from science, but not completely accurate to real science. It’s possible to make a compelling, interesting story with fantasy elements, and often “sci fi” is really just fantasy with sciency sounding stuff in it. I’m not claiming that a work of fiction even needs to be scientifically accurate. The budget is officially listed as “not applicable.” Another key difference between these films is that Interstellar is an excruciating disaster while Coherence is a gem. It was filmed in the filmmaker’s own house, the cast outnumbered the crew, and it had literally no budget. ![]() Coherence uses no special effects and no movie stars. ![]() Interstellar uses lots of expensive special effects and employs lots of expensive movie stars. In some ways, they’re very different though. ![]()
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