It’s not uncommon to read a book and want to live in it. It happens with fantasy, even with thrillers. Rarely, for forms and purposes, with science essays. Exceptions exist and let’s stop now at the first ones places in the ranking of the most read books in Italy. White Holes it is only the latest bestseller signed by the physicist Charles Rovellithat gives Seven short physics lessons onwards it has carved out a place of honor in the world of scientific dissemination. White Holes however, it is also a journey to the limits of the imaginable, where fantasy and scientific theories coexist until further denials.
The idea is all in the subtitle: “Inside the horizon”. White Holes imagine crossing the “event horizon” to find out what is hidden in the most mysterious object in the universe, the black holes. It is a journey that is undertaken with eyes closed, taking what is possible beyond the limits, but with the rigor of those who support thought with theses and equations.
The journey into the stomach of a black hole, white whale of many scientists, calls to itself Dantesque references and great poets, in the belief that “Science and art reorganize our conceptual space”, taking us out of the “usual sleepwalking to see something new of the world”. It is no coincidence that some first and suggestive imaginary forms of a black hole come, through sketches and attempts, opportunism and compromises, even from the cinema. Science fiction he has always looked for images where there was still only an indistinct stimulus, often managing to get as close as possible or surpass it (until further denials).
Movies with black holesThere is no shortage of them, and recently the support of scientific teams alongside the productions has produced stimulating and almost possible visions. The striking case, still being debated, is Interstellar and his Gargantuasupermassive black hole “protagonist” of the events of the sci-fi film directed in 2012 by Christopher Nolan and based on the equations of the physicist and manufacturing consultant Kip S. Thorne. As Rovelli recounts in White Holes, until April 2019 there was no real image of a black hole, which we now have and which rightly excites us. But black holes are not new to the big screen and already in unsuspected times, threatening vortices chewed up spaceships and crews.
Here you are 3 movies (+1) which like Rovelli’s book, but with a little more freedom, get lost in a black hole never to get out of it again.
The Black Hole1979
Disney’s answer to Star Wars, when they were not yet one. To counter the success of the work of George LucasWalt Disney looked for an excuse to stage a space adventure scenario suddenly trendy on the big screen.
In The Mouse Machine JP Telotte says that the studios noticed a certain increase in interest in a term coined just a decade earlier: black hole. The original script was completely rewritten on the run, turning the film into the expedition of a spacecraft towards a black hole and another convoy which, mysteriously, had managed to escape his attraction. The answer to star wars rested on many references to Lucas’ film, but at the center of his story – and even in the title – there was an element that Luke Skywalker’s “Far, Far Away Galaxy” did not have and still does not have (for Now).
The Black Hole it is a masterpiece little mentioned but very important. He cost as much, as never before for the studio, and it was the Disney’s first R-rated title (for recurring use of “Hell” and “Damn”). Furthermore, introduced Disney to Computer Graphics. In the cast of The Black Hole also the star of Psycho Anthony Perkins.
The story is very full but simple, and beyond the classic scenes adventure gives an unprecedented blue vortex. The crew sits at a fully laid table while from the windows of the spaceship a gigantic black hole spins on itself. It is immediately evident that no one in the production had the slightest idea of what that object with which he played freely was, and in fact it is still fascinating to observe.
Many reviews of the time, quite mixed in judgment, noted that the center of the black hole vaguely recalled Dantesque environments. As Rovelli writes in White Holes“like Dante and Virgil in the circles of helllet’s go down”.
The Black Hole is available on Disney+.
event horizon, 1997
The title is already everything, at least in the original. In The white holes by Rovelli, the event horizon is the “front door” to the journey into the black hole and is what we can really see of it; brilliant outline of this dark eye. In Italian the film directed in 1997 by Paul W. S. Anderson takes the title dthe Point of no return and it is equally emblematic, albeit of another aspect of the story: its fate. A special expedition goes through an artificial black hole and into another reality, which once again recalls Dante and transform its characters into so many Odysseus scattered “inside the horizon”.
The references and quotations have been exposed for years in analyzes that never fail to underline the limits of a film that has aged with time, but is still evocative and fully a child of the space horror tradition. The film’s tagline read: “The Shining in the space”.
Rovelli writes: “let us therefore enter, with the courage of one who throws himself into the unknown. With the voice of Ulysses in his ears: do not want to deny the experience, behind the sun, of the world without people. Like Ulysses’ companions, of the oars we make wings for the mad flight”.
Event Horizon (Point of no return) is available on Paramount+.
Interstellar2014
Interstellar Of Christopher Nolan he made scientific verisimilitude of his own very complicated plot a brag. Then there is of course the cast, with Michael Caine, Matthew McConaughey And Anne Hathaway, and Nolan’s space direction. But he comes first Gargantuathe cinematic black hole that more than anyone else seemed to get closer to reality.
The film, based on the equations of the physicist Kip S. Thorneis told in a book entitled The Science of Interstellar: Traveling Through Spacetimewhich lists studies and theories grafted into the writing process of the screenplay and, somewhat like a scientific storyboard, in the planning of the staging of the black hole.
On the relationship between possible reality and imagined story still lives much of the fame of Interstellar, which however remains cinema and as such must be observed and judged. Even if, believing a little more in that huge and ineluctable black pupil in space helps the story, which remains so.
Interstellar is available on Netflix and NOW.
Everything Everywhere all at once (?), 2022
The movie of Daniels awarded in 2023 with 7 Oscarsamong which Best Filmit’s not a space adventure and certainly not there are no black holes. There’s so much more, parallel universes and upside down laws of physics. But we talk about it because, just a day ago, the actress Jamie Lee Curtisone of the recipients of the Academy’s statuettes Everything Everywhere All At Once, posted a photo comparing the photo of M87the black hole at the center of our galaxy, to the “bagel” protagonist of some essential (and existential) passages of the film.
“Coincidence? We think not”, reads the caption of the actress’s Instagram post. The bagel of Everything Everywhere All At Once it’s not a black hole, but the wild creativity of the Daniels’ film plot makes even this closeness possible without it being really possible to disprove it. And above all it demonstrates once again the incredible fascination that black holes, as a threshold of no return and at the same time an invitation to travel, have for art which was perhaps the first to try to imagine their shape.