Narrative Stratification and Translevel Conflict in the Film Interstellar

Abstract

Interstellar has a narrative structure consisting of three narrative levels. The extradiegetic level establishes the narrative framework through documentary-style recollective interviews of the elderly Murph; the intradiegetic level takes Cooper's journey to search for habitable planets in space as the main line; the metadiegetic level takes the abstract subject of "future human civilization" as the narrator. The narrative transgression in the film is generated by the narrator and Cooper crossing their own narrative levels and invading other levels, thus answering the question: "When time, space, causality, and even character personalities can be arbitrarily rewritten by higher dimensions, what cannot be folded?" The answer always points to a seemingly fragile yet constantly verified force: love.