10/10
I have never been to outer space and I will never travel to
outer space. While this statement
applies to 99.9% of us, Gravity is powerful enough to make
us fear a place we will never go to. I
will never become untethered from a spacecraft and tumble clumsily by myself
with little hope of rescue, but Gravity assures me I am afraid of
it. You have seen movies set in space
before, but I guarantee you, you have never seen anything like Gravity
before.
Here is a 90-minute film that feels like 30 minutes when it’s
over; I was shocked so much time had passed by the end. Writer/director Alfonso Cuaron has made
wonderful movies before (Y Tu Mama Tambien, 2001; Children
of Men, 2006) and continues his streak of excellence by knocking Gravity
out of the park. There is minimal dialogue,
just a handful of actors, extremely complicated physics, and enough adrenaline
to make you enjoy the end-credit sequence to steady yourself before heading out
to the lobby.
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a communications
specialist fixing the Hubble Telescope on her first mission aboard the space
shuttle. Completely focused on the
mission at hand, her physiological readings give away to mission control
(voiced by Ed Harris) just how nervous she is tucked into her space suit
separated from the safety of the shuttle.
Mission commander Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) struts around on the
opposite end of the spectrum. He zooms
around in his jet pack dodging and weaving between the shuttle and his team of
scientists while telling funny stories to keep everyone calm.
Almost immediately, the mission is aborted and everyone is
packing up to go home because of a chain reaction event of space debris heading
straight for the shuttle. An already
nervous Dr. Stone has no idea what to do but steady as an ox Kowalski is there
to take charge and logically talk her through what the next should be even
though the absolute worst situations keep arising as soon as they solve the
most recent calamitous event.
Clooney plays Kowalski as a rock-steady leader whose first
priority is the safety of his crew. The
movie belongs to Bullock though. She is
front and center in every scene and even though it all occurs in zero gravity,
she has the weight and stress of the world on her shoulders. Floating, zooming, and sling-shotting around
space from one disaster to another at break-neck speed is interspersed every
now and again by a breather.
In a noticeably gorgeous film, the best shot of the movie is
a very vulnerable Dr. Stone floating in a fetal position, which I could
probably watch for an hour by itself.
There is some discussion about the film’s cinematography by Emmanuel
Lubezki (The Tree of Life, 2011) who will absolutely be nominated for an
Oscar for his work. Just like last
year’s winner, Life of Pi, how much actual photography is there when just
about every scene is filmed in front of a green screen and filled in with CGI
effects?
Also, I have no doubt there are multiple plot problems with
the physics of the film. I do not know
enough about it, but just aiming at an object in space and hurtling toward it
is probably not going to get you there.
You would need one of the brains from The Big Bang Theory to
explain it to you when it’s over; however, at no point during the movie did I
have time to think about what is an is not plausible.
As in Avatar, just about everything you
see on the screen is fake, yet Gravity is one of the most beautiful
movies I have ever seen. When a macro
view of Earth is your background, it is hard not to just sit back and stare at
it. I highly recommend you see this film
in 3D and on an IMAX screen. Seeing at
home on DVD for the first time will feel so much less impressive.
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