The characters in
the movie as a microcosm of humanity, and their interactions are
similar to those of people on a larger scale. The movie, up until the
final encounter with the Sun, I see as the struggle of life
forms to survive when they know themselves only as individuals.
They are afraid of the world, afraid of each other, worry about
death, and caught up in their own immediate problems and
relatively narrow perspective of the universe. This subjective
diversity in perception is actually necessary for complex
interaction to take place between individuals.
As Capa is setting up the bomb, he is still consumed by anxiety
about the completion of the mission, of the billions depending
on him back on Earth, of the lives lost trying to get him here,
of completing his life's work of designing this bomb, of
humanity's imaginary struggle against the whims of nature. He
has a healthy respect for the sun, he knows how powerful it is,
and how insignificant he is in comparison. He knows the math, he
knows the physics, but nothing could have prepared him for the
real thing. When faced with the pure wonder of the cosmos, all
these things fall away, and the only thing left is bliss and
awe. The petty worries of humanity some 93 million miles away
lose all meaning alongside the eternal.
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