Gravity

The motion picture industry has a long history of utilizing disasters as a plot point in order to manufacture drama. After all, it is one of the few things virtually everyone can relate to. We may not all experience earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, or massive fires, but we experience them by proxy all the time through the media coverage as these things ravage the world. As of this writing, the city of Los Angeles is on fire, and news reports depicting the devastation are being broadcast nearly around the clock. As a species, we see these things and empathize with the impacted. This shared empathy is one of the many reasons why disaster movies affect us as much as they do. We can watch a film like The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure and feel what the characters are feeling without actually having gone through that experience ourselves. It’s also a big part of why the film Titanic worked as well as it did. We wouldn’t have cared one bit about the relationship of Jack and Rose had that ship made it to America safely. 

Disaster movies rarely make an impact come award season, except occasionally in the production awards. Titanic, of course, was perhaps the biggest exception to that. The Towering Inferno was nominated for Best Picture, too, but few people believe it deserved that nomination. I’ll get to that when I review that film at a later date. 2013’s Gravity, however, isn’t exactly a disaster film, although it can definitely be categorized that way. Certainly, disaster strikes and continues to escalate as the film goes on, but the film is more about the spirit of survival than it is about the disaster itself. Director Alfonso Cuarón, who I knew at the time only from his single entry in the Harry Potter franchise and his brilliantly made Children of Men, wanted his film to be more than just spectacular effects and danger. He wanted to transform the disaster genre into an emotional drama about a woman who has every right to accept death, who has lost everything in her life, yet still finds a reason to press on and survive. He took seven years to get from Children of Men to Gravity because he knew what he wanted to portray on film and felt the technology was not there yet to make it happen.

The film opens on this beautiful shot of Earth from space and then just lingers on it for a minute before allowing our eyes to narrow in on a solitary object in orbit, the space shuttle Explorer attached to the Hubble telescope, making repairs and upgrades. One by one, we see movement as we are introduced to our sole characters: Lieutenant Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). Matt is the commander of the team and a veteran astronaut, whereas Ryan is a specialist who has never been in space before. Ryan is attempting to service the Hubble Space Telescope, but an emergency call from Mission Control alerts them to a serious problem. The Russians have shot down a presumed defunct spy satellite, which has had the unexpected side effect of launching a large amount of debris into orbit. This debris has become a rapidly expanding cloud racing through space and is on a collision course with the Explorer. Before either Kowalski or Stone can retreat into Explorer and escape the area, the space debris starts smashing into the ship, the telescope, and Ryan is thrown clear, untethered from everything. 

Kowalski, using a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), manages to rescue her, but the shuttle is destroyed, killing everyone else on board. In an attempt to maneuver the two of them over to the International Space Station (ISS), they run out of fuel for the MMU and crash hard into it. Ryan gets tangled up in the straps of the parachute for the only escape pod, but Kowalski floats clear, tethered  only to her and his momentum threatens to pull her loose, too. He sacrifices his own life to save hers, and she is able to get inside the ISS. Unfortunately, the escape pod on board the ISS is damaged and cannot attempt reentry. Her only option is to use it to rendezvous with a Chinese station that has another escape pod and hope that that one is sound enough to get home. 

Sandra Bullock carries this film for the vast majority of its runtime. At the time this film was released, there were some negative comments about how her character panics easily, which would be inconsistent with a highly trained astronaut. There is some truth to that, of course, but the background we get on Ryan Stone is that she isn’t a typical astronaut but a specialist whose primary specialty is computers and that she was given a mere six months of training for this mission in space. She admits to Kowalski that while she is trained to operate the landing pods, she has never done so and has never even successfully landed one in the simulator on Earth. It’s a bit of a stretch to believe someone who has never been able to even accomplish that in a controlled environment would be allowed to go into space where she may find herself having to do so in an emergency situation such as this. That being said, someone who is not an experienced career astronaut may react just fine in simulations but panic when put in any real danger. Kowalski is a veteran and has better control over himself during the initial hit, but he won’t be around for round two, where she will have to pull herself together if she is to survive this. 

Perhaps the most powerful scene in the entire film comes late after she is in the ISS escape pod and finds it is out of fuel, unable to propel her towards the Chinese station and possible safety. We learned earlier in the film that she had lost her daughter in a tragic accident and has no one else in her life. As she is sitting in that escape pod, believing there is nothing else that she can do to save herself, she turns off the oxygen , determined to die on her own terms. But dying like this is too easy when there is always another thing to try. She’s sitting back in her chair, arms folded across her chest like she’s posing for her coffin, and closes her eyes. Suddenly a thumping sound comes from outside and Kowalski is there, letting himself in to the capsule. We know immediately that he cannot possibly be there and that is reinforced by him opening the airlock to get in before Ryan can even put her helmet on. This is, of course, just in her mind. He gives her a reason to not give up and, through this imaginary visage, she figures out a way to propel the capsule in the direction she needs to go. 

It’s not easy to carry a film all on your own. Some of the best actors have tried it and failed. Tom Hanks is a great actor, but Cast Away did him no favors, especially after he started losing his mind a little and interacting with a volleyball like it was a real person. Perhaps the best example I can think of of someone successfully carrying a film all by themselves is Robert Redford in the J. C. Chandor directed film All is Lost. That film literally has just one cast member, and Redford has to spend the entire film all to himself, keeping us invested in his story without hardly a word of dialogue. Sandra Bullock isn’t quite on the same level, but that’s not a slight on her part. This is a challenging role, and she is up to the task. The way she talks to herself and communicates things without someone else to bounce dialogue off of works and keeps us with her even as things seem to become insurmountable. 

Alfonso Cuarón’s use of cameras is simply inspired. He was working with Emmanuel Lubezki for this film, and there are times where he brings the camera up so close to Sandra Bullock that it goes inside her helmet, and you can see the view as she would be seeing it, complete with the slightly dirty glass separating them. There are also times, especially early on, where she is tumbling through space, and the camera stays with her, at first letting her spin in front of it, then closing in and matching her rotation while the world outside spins instead. It is an impressive image to look at, and this effect is even more effective in 3D, where the visuals and camera work really shine. This is a movie that was made for the 3D format, one of only a few in recent years where it is absolutely an integral part of the viewing experience. This film was an experience in IMAX 3D, which is where it made most of its money during its theatrical run. That’s not an option for most of us anymore, which is a major factor in the film’s reputation diminishing since it hit home video. Not everyone has a setup like mine where I can watch this film as it was intended, on a big screen and in 3D. This is also one of the reasons it didn’t fare better at the Oscars when voters were watching it at home on screener discs. It loses something when seen on a smaller flat screen at home. 

This is a spectacle film and as such it loses much of its appeal when watched in any way other than the way it was initially designed for. I’m not saying you have to watch it in an IMAX 3D screening to appreciate it, but it will be a lesser experience screening it on your cellphone or tablet. You lose the depths of space and the beautifully rendered vistas of Earth as seen from orbit when all of that is compressed down to a tiny screen. You also lose the sheer spectacle of having space debris flung at you in three dimensions and the beautiful aura of sound coming at you from all around. To some, that may sound gimmicky, but for this film, it really is part of the overall experience. The film didn’t really stand a chance at the Oscars, but when viewed right, it’s still one of the best theatrical experiences that came out of 2013. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Alfonso Cuarón and David Heyman

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón (won)

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock

Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (won)

Best Film Editing: Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger (won)

Best Original Score: Steven Price (won)

Best Production Design: Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin, and Joanne Woolard

Best Sound Editing: Glenn Freemantle (won)

Best Sound Mixing: Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead, and Chris Munro (won)

Best Visual Effects: Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, David Shirk, and Neil Corbould (won)

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Release Date: October 4, 2013

Running Time: 91 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney

Directed By: Alfonso Cuarón