Gravity is a Timely Dose of Human Triumph

Make no mistake, we are living in a time of renaissance for science fiction. Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men) has directed one of the most impressive sci-fi films about space since Apollo 13. While some professional astronauts have picked the film apart for inconsistencies, others, like Buzz Aldren, couldn’t have been more thrilled to see a film like Gravity.

Not fifteen minutes into the film, the sense of poetic normalcy of seeing astronauts doing their thing 300 miles above the earth is shattered by the sort of plausible catastrophe that represents the cost that space travellers pay for that beauty. It is also filmed as one, continuous 13-minute shot. Much of the film, in fact, involves long, hypnotic shots. It has the effect of always experiencing the danger from a single point of view, one that seamlessly shifts from global to intimate in a matter of seconds. This choice of cinematic style is a stroke of genius in a film filled to the brim with other visionary techniques that also help us identify with the protagonist.

When a Russian missile test destroys a Russian satellite, sending debris racing through the void towards the team, the story begins. And it doesn’t let up until the very last minutes. The disaster sends medical engineer and rookie Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and veteran Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) adrift in space, and all this without that seemingly obligatory scene we might have had to endure in another, more conventional approach to the film – the scene where the two characters bond, where back-story and other exposition is established.

But we learn just as quickly that this exposition is unnecessary. What we have are two people in outer space, who have to deal with a bad situation. That’s it, that’s all you need to know.

As a result, we learn about these characters by watching how they react, as we should. And because the danger is so compelling and believable, the characters become real. This is the glue that makes this film work. Had it been more character-oriented, it would have betrayed the visual potential. If it had gone the other way (as most films do), it would not have left an impression on anyone in the audience, and the lowered stakes would have made for a lackluster experience.

I can’t say it enough. Every so often, a movie comes along that is so ambitious in its objectives that, when it becomes successful, reminds us that there are still stories left untold. From IndieWire: 

"Four years in the making, "Gravity" presents an artificial world that could only have been made today, and provides a fantastic showcase of new possibilities."

There are many ways of seeing the world through which our eyes are not accustomed to seeing. The nauseating servings of filmmakers like Michael Bay leave many movie-goers cynical about the future of film, because they think that the special effects potential afforded to us by every new wave of technology is only making things worse. They are getting sick of the light shows, literally.

Gravity transcends all that. So many moments in the film seem so familiar, yet they feel fresh. It is as if, in so many of these moments, you could just as easily imagine another director doing a piss-poor job of the very same scene you are watching. You’ve seen it so many times before, the clichés and the pandering. This is the moment when X character has a heart-to-heart with Y character, and “finds” herself.

But in Gravity, these moments work. They work because they don’t feel forced or contrived. They are not like checkpoints in the screenplay, and the action also doesn’t feel calculated. It feels random, chaotic. Just like Space. This is not a character-driven story, or even a plot-driven story (not in the sense that conventional plot points used by other genres – like, say, detective stories – rely upon them). This is almost physics-driven. The action is bourn out of the chaos of Nature, and the struggle of our heroine through this onslaught is what brings about the drama.

As a result, character is revealed. For example, when a major piece of back-story is revealed about Stone near the end of the film, not only does it make complete sense (explaining her reactions throughout the movie), it also feels somehow irrelevant. Whereas in other films dealing with marooned astronauts faced with typical feelings like loneliness and madness, we seldom have the time to dwell on it. And when we do, even Stone doesn’t react in a predictable way. In fact, she takes us places we never would have thought to go.

The buzz generated around the special effects are well-deserved, and an equal share of praise should go to the script, but any review of the film would be incomplete without mentioning the power of the film’s music. Picking up where Kubrick left off, Gravity takes the lack of sound in space to great, poetic heights.

When we see Stone in the foreground fixing a problem outside the ship’s hull, while debris begins to ruthlessly shred and destroy a station behind her, the lack of sound effects is oddly unsettling. The music almost acts as a guide to the visual horror we are witnessing, and even the design of the music seems to mimic the sirens and the engines that otherwise would be heard.

Aside from the few moments inside one station or another, the only sound effects we hear (besides the dialogue we hear throughout) is mostly vibrations. The low-frequency sounds we hear through the space suit makes the danger we witness visually all the more disturbing. But wherever the character struggles, despairs or triumphs, the music guides us. We become adrift ourselves, tethered only by the raw emotion of the characters. We want to be with them, because we relate to nothing else. This was Gravity’s signature accomplishment: humanizing man’s precarious relationship with the infinite.