"I hate space.."
In Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski have to work together in order to survive in the wast nothingness of space, after a heap of satellite debris has destroyed their shuttle. Dr. Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) has only been an astronaut for a couple of weeks, so its up to Matt (played by George Clooney), a much more seasoned space veteran, to calm her down and guide her through the chaotic situation that they find themselves in. The movie is written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the man that brought us films like Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but Gravity is likely going to be the film that he'll be remembered for in the decades to come. It took him more than four years and 120 million dollars to create this piece of cinema, and if you were to trust the critics, the result of his tireless work is one of the greatest and most visually groundbreaking space film ever made.
The Visuals:
Alfonso Cuarón's and Terrence Malick's go to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shot this film, and as of November 2013, his camera work in Gravity marks the absolute pinnacle of cinematic photography, and the film's editor and visual effects specialists deserve the same kind of praise. This film consists of nothing but long, uninterrupted shots of the most marvelous scenery I've seen in my short life, and the fact that 95 % of it is created on a computer is mind boggling to say the least. I've never been a huge fan of 3D and extravagant CGI special effects, but the way in which this film pushes the boundaries of visual cinema is unheard of and incomparable to anything ever created before it, and I'd be shocked if the academy doesn't reward this film with every single technical honor available to them. With Gravity, Cuarón and Lubezki does to 3D what Paul Greengrass and his cinematographer did to shaky-cam back in the Bourne days, which is to take an irritating, redundant and overused camera technique and turn it into a respectable art form that serves as a way to enhance the stuff that's already there, rather than as a vehicle that everything else relies upon.
Because of its beauty and astounding impact, I'm having a hard time putting into words what these visuals actually look like. I'm just now realizing that this is exactly what the man who discovered fire must have felt like when he first tried to explain to his friends what it actually was he'd seen, and in the same way that fire ended up revolutionizing the way in which humans lived back then, I wouldn't be surprised if Gravity ends up doing something similarly unexpected to the world of visual cinema. The first scene in the film lasts for 17 almighty minutes, in which the characters just flow around in space doing their astronaut thing as usual. The camera slowly floats in and around the astronauts as they work on the outside of the Hubble telescope in this tour de force of an opening sequence, and it manages to capture the essence of space and the cold, desolate vastness of it in a way that makes it look and feel utterly beautiful and nail-bitingly scary at the same time. The devastating silence of outer space is depicted to perfection in this film as well, and watching space stations and satellites get absolutely ripped to shreds without making a sound is nothing short of terrifying.
The Story:
Gravity's aesthetic values is its strongest asset by far, and even though they go a very long way, visual appeal alone isn't enough to make a movie truly fantastic. A fully fleshed survival thriller like Gravity has to have an actual story and some actual characters in order build up some real emotional weight, and unfortunately, this is where Gravity looses a bit of its huge initial impact. To put it frankly, Cuarón's latest movie isn't anything more than a meat and potatoes survival thriller with a couple of familiar characters with cut and dry character traits, that just happens to benefit from the most astounding visuals ever put on a movie screen. Some of the more emotional character development moments just don't carry the emotional weight behind them that they were intended to, and I never truly felt as if I connected to any of the characters and cared about what happened to them. The overall story did serve as an effective survival thriller that reminded me of films like 127 Hours and Rescue Dawn, and I've got nothing down right negative to say about the plot and the way it developed, but it just doesn't reach the same level of spectacularness as the visuals.
The Characters:
In terms of characters, Dr. Stone and Matt Kowalski are the only ones in the entire film. Ed Harris does make an appearance in the beginning of the film as a voice being heard over a radio, but other than that, the entire weight of the narrative rests on the shoulders of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and as far as I'm able to tell, both of them do a good job with what they have available to them. Clooney plays an experienced veteran astronaut who's on his last mission before retiring, and as such, there really aren't that many directions for his character to go in. It wasn't that hard to predict where his character was going in terms of plot progression for me, and even though he's funny and well portrayed by Clooney, Matt Kowalski ended up feeling like a wooden character without any real tricks up his sleeve. Bullock's character suffered from the same problem in my opinion, because even though her performance as Dr. Stone is the better of the two, the character itself feels like a cardboard cutout of the same "rookie that finds herself in a tight spot and has to find a way out there with the help of a veteran colleague"-character that we've all seen a million times before.
The Verdict:
When it's all said and done, Gravity is one of the most overwhelming visual experiences I've had in my entire life. Grasping the magnitude of the achievement that the guys who created this world have achieved without actually watching the movie is next to impossible, and that's why I think that anyone with a set of functioning eyes should go ahead and watch Gravity for themselves. Its story and its characters might not be more than just above average, but the sheer amount of goosebumps and heart attacks that Alfonso Cuarón's latest picture will inflict upon you anyway, almost manages to make up for that in my opinion. In the and, I think that any movie that is as certain to win every single technical Academy Award as Gravity is, deserves to be bough and enjoyed on BluRay. This is also the absolute only way you should go about watching it if you didn't get a chance to catch it in you local cinema, because without proper sound, picture quality and screen size, Gravity isn't more than a regular survival thriller, that just happens to take place in space. (5/6)
Gravity IMDb page here
Gravity trailer here
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