I didn't get to see Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, his first film since 2006's Children of Men, opening weekend and I was obviously pretty upset about this. Cuaron is one of my favorite directors and Children of Men is, in my opinion, easily one of the top 10 films of the last decade. I was even more upset after seeing, or rather hearing, the reactions of the few people in the cinema with me earlier this week. As the film began, it was just me and two or three older couples scattered about the theater. Typically I prefer this to the rowdiness of the Friday night crowd, but the fact that these people continued to chit-chat through the opening credits - white sentences on a stark black background explaining how life in space is impossible - had me worried. Then it happened. The noise continued to crescendo louder and louder, bringing up PTSD flashbacks of the THX sound that would play before every movie of my childhood, until WHAM! Smashcut to complete silence and a breathtakingly magnificent shot of Earth and its majestic blue waters. It was a truly remarkable use of visuals and sound design. But what was more remarkable was the effect it had on me as well as those three chatty couples. Everyone was immediately silenced, utterly taken aback by what they were viewing. It was an incredible moment, something I had never experienced before and wish I could have shared with a packed house. It was also a perfect microcosm of what Gravity is as a whole.
Because HOLY HUBBOLE! (Yes, that's the best space-related pun I could come up with.) I have watched a lot of movies during my brief time on this planet, and I can safely say that I have never seen anything like Gravity. As others have pointed out, the only thing that comes close is perhaps Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even then you're stretching it. There has never truly been a film like Gravity and what it has done will open the doors for a brand new wave of cinema. It's one of those rare films where everyone basically accepts going into any discussion that it's an amazing movie, gets that out there and then talks about the little nitpicks they have about. And instead of simple drooling on my shoes in amazement (more than usual, I mean), that's what I'm going to do too.
What immediately springs to mind when thinking or writing about Gravity is that it is a technical marvel. After seeing Gravity was one of, if not the first time I have been completely baffled by how half the half the shots I saw were created. At one point the camera goes into Sandra Bullock's helmet and back out again showing her face without ever cutting. CGI Sandra Bullock face on CGI Sandra Bullock body? It couldn't have been the Vomit Comet like they used in Apollo 13. The shots are too sophisticated for that. How do you get those shots? How is she moving like that? Either they really shot Sandra Bullock and George Clooney into space and almost killed them to make this movie or there are some unprecedented things going on here. And to my surprise it was the latter. Through the use of robots and techniques created for this film as well as 80-90% of the film being CGI animation, Cuaron and company were able to present what is probably the most realistic portrayal of space in narrative cinema history.
Gravity is probably the closest any of us will ever get to being in space, and after seeing Gravity it will probably be the closest you'll ever want to get to being in space. Using his patented long takes (the opening scene of the film alone is a single shot that lasts between 12 and 15 minutes), Cuaron is able to ratchet up the tension to nearly unbearable levels. Not only do these long takes force you to experience what is happening in nearly real time, they don't let you off the hook. There's no cut to save you, nothing else to focus on except the horror occurring right in front of you. As Sandra Bullock is fighting to preserve her remaining oxygen to stay conscious, you are trying to remember to breathe yourself. While she struggles to free an escape pod, you watch in eerie silence as the satellite behind her explodes sending thousands of shrapnel pieces hurtling towards her. Pervading throughout Gravity is a feeling of unnerving, almost crippling terror - the incredible (both in its realism and in the fact that it feels so realistic) feeling that you're actually experiencing a series of catastrophic disasters in outer space.
This is accomplished in no small part by Cuaron's direction and his longtime partner, Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, but it is also due to the already mentioned flawless sound design. Gravity takes the Alien tagline, "In space, no one can hear you scream," to a whole other level. The loud explosions that populated the various trailers for the film have vanished. Instead, the only sounds that can be heard are those from inside the helmets of the astronauts. Choosing to forego the Hollywood trope of booming blockbuster explosions in favor of accuracy (as un-showy as it might be) is remarkably daring - this can be easily seen in the fact that the marketers did choose to add sound effects to the explosions for fear of losing or alienating possible audiences. And it does! The cognitive dissonance caused by seeing a giant satellite explosion but only being able to hear Sandra Bullock's labored breathing as she tries to detach an escape pod is unnervingly frightening. But that unnerving fright is shared with Sandra Bullock's character so that not only are you feeling an emotion, you're fully empathizing with the character on screen. The fact that that character just happens to be an astronaut going through an unbelievably calamitous series of events just makes the film's accomplishments all the more amazing.
But Gravity is not without its faults. The fact that I've gotten 1000 words into this review and haven't really mentioned anything at all about the plot should tell you something. Essentially, Sandra Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a bio-medical engineer turned Mission Specialist, on her first space shuttle mission with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) to service the Hubble Space Telescope. During the final spacewalk, debris from a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite has created a chain reaction of destruction that leaves the telescope shattered and Kowalski and Ryan drifting in free space trying to find a way to get back to Earth. If you boil it all down, it's a fairly simple and un-unique premise and the script doesn't do much to make these characters feel deep or lived in. The film also plays quite a bit with the themes of depression and finding the power to overcome and move on with your life which, upon reflection, appear very heavy-handed. (A particular scene with Sandra Bullock being told she needs "to learn to let go" and another where a character blatantly states that she can either move on or let depression end her life come to mind.) But, like I said, going into any discussion about Gravity you accept it's an amazing movie and these are just my nits to pick.
Because when you get down to brass tacks, all the things that Gravity does right completely outweigh what problems it does have. Yes, the characters for the most part are pretty shallow. And yes, George Clooney basically just plays George Clooney. But Sandra Bullock puts on the performance of a lifetime and adds the gravitas needed to drive the picture nearly single-handedly. Gravity is an epic movie, but despite its stage it often feels incredibly intimate; and without Bullock's performance, this could have resulted in a complete disaster rather than the tour de force it actually is. Frankly, the sheer technical brilliance alone is enough to elevate Gravity to one of the best films of the year. Add Cuaron's mastery of visual storytelling (where there are heavy-handed theme explanations, there are also beautifully subtle expressions of those themes) and the awe-inspiring scenes that result, and the evocative sound design that includes Steven Price's emotional score that feels less manipulative and more so simply reflects the emotions the audience is already feeling and what you have is one of the most thrilling, visually and emotionally rewarding films of the year.
See it in 3D, see it in the biggest theater you can, and see it with as many people as you can manage. But most of all, just see it.
9 out of 10
