Over the course of the film, the core five-note melody (the soundtrack is released on November 17th, but for a taste listen to Trailer #3) is expressed in different ways. The score is an ensemble effort combining 34 strings, 24 woodwinds, four pianos, and 60 choir singers, all of which get their time to sound off.

But the starring, and most meaningful voice, is the 1926 four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ, currently housed at the 12th-century Temple Church in London and played in the movie by its director of music, Roger Sayer. As Zimmer recently told the Film Music Society, the organ was chosen for its significance to science: From the 17th century to the time of the telephone exchange, the pipe organ was known as the most complex man-made device ever invented. Its physical appearance reminded him of space ship afterburners. And the airiness of the sound slipping through pipes replicates the experience of suited astronauts, where every breath is precious (a usual preoccupation with sci-fi movies that is taken very literally in Zimmer’s music, which also features the exhalations of his human choir).

Zimmer’s score—which alternates between a 19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century Minimalism—of course has an element of spirituality to it. But the organ does more than just recall churches. From the movie’s earliest moments, it performs some very necessary narrative legwork for the overburdened screenplay. When it kicks in as Cooper chases down an Indian surveillance drone, a light touch on the organ keys, paired with rousing strings, creates a whirling, ethereal sound that channels Cooper’s interior life. The giddy tone it sets demonstrates that Cooper is a risk-taker and adventurer, which solves the screenplay’s early problem of establishing emotional motive for Cooper to leave his children.

As organs are wont to do, this one resonates. And there are moments when the decibels at which it does can only be described as an action-movie crutch. The organ gets a noticeably more heavy-handed touch as the plot becomes ever-more preposterous. It blasts when the elder Professor Brand, played by Michael Caine, hands over the keys to the spaceship—and his life’s work—to a farmer (Cooper) who presumably hasn’t piloted anything except a plow in a while. It booms when Ann Hathaway’s younger Dr. Brand shakes hands with “Them,” heavily foreshadowing events to come. Some of these moments necessitate the extra spiritualistic oomph, but it’s often the case that when the plot turns implausible, Nolan and Zimmer ramp up the organ.

But the volume—and the way it occasionally drowns out everything else—seems to be the point: This is a movie where emotion is the overriding principal, just as Anne Hathaway says midway through when she muses, “Love is the one thing that we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.” The way the film is constructed, Hans Zimmer delivers on its transcendent promise. His score supersedes the nonsensical aspects, conveying a sonic experience so powerful it overwhelms the tiny, logic-based details.

Nolan knows when his sound design is poor, but he’s adamant that it makes a point. When Bane was deemed incomprehensible by test audiences in The Dark Knight Rises, the director staunchly refused to re-do the dubbing: As he told The Hollywood Reporter, he wanted to make that point that the visuals were just as important as the audio “otherwise it’s just radioplay.” Another exec close to Nolan added that abstracted sound makes for a more participatory cinematic experience. A comparison of the test prologue and the final cut of the film show that Nolan did indeed clarify Bane's voice, albeit very quietly and without an official statement.