Like its heavenly antecedent 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Interstellar (2014) is sublime in the Burkean sense, that is, in its capacity to bring viewers to the event horizon of existential terror and despair. Where Kubrick’s rendering of spacetime is like a spaghetti Jackson Pollock whose meaning depends as much on the viewer as it does on the artist, Nolan’s provides answers, the answers given that they come from theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. The science is indeed impressive, but Interstellar’s ethics are the main reason why the film has drawn such an enthusiastic response. The science works so effectively on us because quantum relativity is depicted as being perfectly in line with secular humanism: humans can save humanity through a Theory of Everything which may not require an alien or a god. Interstellar ethics also means good parenting, literacy, and solidarity. Love, too, matters even as Brand’s (Anne Hathaway) floppy reflection on the subject is the film’s weakest moment (and no fault of the excellent Hathaway). Such hopeful humanism comes as welcome relief to the global warming weary moviegoer.

2001’s final scene is of a human fetus floating in space, what could be Kubrick’s strong anthropic principle, eternal recurrence, or unwavering anthropocentrism in light of an extraterrestrial monolith. In any case, Kubrick’s spacetime is the lonelier and more disturbing of the two mentioned here. Both, however, are equally profound in their sublimity, in most if not all possible worlds.