Review of “Gravity”
by Désirée Guzzetta
This movie is rated: You need to watch it in 3D
Movie Ratings are: (1. Watch it in 3D 2. Watch it at the movie theater 3. Watch if you have nothing better to do 4. Wait for the Blu-ray 5. I will never get these hours of my life back…. RUN!!!)
“Gravity” (2013)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Writers: Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón
Starring Sandra Bullock (Dr. Ryan Stone), George Clooney (Matt Kowalski), Ed Harris (Voice of Mission Control)
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes
After-credit sequence: None (though mission controls voices continue to be heard throughout the credits)
“Gravity,” the new film from director Alfonso Cuarón, is a stunning visual achievement. It’s also one hell of a tense ride. Although the story’s not quite up to par with Cuarón’s previous feature, 2006’s “Children of Men,” it’s still affecting and effective, thanks in large part to an Oscar-level performance from Sandra Bullock.
Clocking in at a lean 91 minutes, the film opens with brief information about life in space, particularly that there is no sound. We’re then treated to a gorgeous sight of the Earth as seen from space, where Bullock, who plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a first-time astronaut who is paired with Clooney’s veteran, Matt Kowalski (on his last mission ever, of course), is working on the Hubble telescope with other astronauts. Soon, catastrophe strikes in the form of debris rocketing in a trajectory with Stone and Kowalski’s shuttle, the Explorer.
The two become stranded in space, not only cut off from their ship, but from communication with Mission Control (voice of Ed Harris), and begin fighting for their lives as they struggle to reach the nearby–relatively speaking–International Space Station before the debris orbits back around to them.
Though “Gravity” trades in typical B-film tropes (such as the neophyte being schooled by the grizzled veteran who is only one mission away from retirement), what elevates it are the visuals, the score, and the performances.
Cuarón creates believable action, whether it’s Stone hanging on to a space shuttle for her life, Kowalski using a jet pack for his “spacewalk,” or the field of debris bearing down on the protagonists. This is also a film that benefits from 3D, even if the non-CG portion of the equation was post-converted. Put simply: “Gravity” looks spectacular. From the eerie beauty of the Earth seen from hundreds of miles above to the shuttle mid-disaster to the background of space as Stone tries desperately to get her bearings after drifting away from the shuttle, everything looks beautiful and more importantly, real. Extensive craft and care went into each image and it shows.
Because there is no sound in space, Cuarón relies on the score to fill in the gaps. The lack of diegetic sound is, in fact, what makes many of the scenes even eerier; all we hear are the voices in the helmets, but never what’s happening when the characters are outside the ship, whether it’s drilling to remove some bolts or a large debris field shredding a space shuttle. That job is left to Steven Price’s magnificent score, which not only punctuates what’s happening on screen, but also provides an occasional emotional jolt.
Clooney brings an easy appeal to his Kowalski, who is full of stories everyone’s heard before, but who is just charming enough that you want to hear them again. What keeps the film grounded, though, is Bullock’s brilliant performance as the emotionally reserved Stone, whose inner turmoil doesn’t only come from her immediate circumstances. It’s to Bullock’s (and Clooney’s, in Kowalski’s case) credit that what is a stock character is so relatable and rootable. Bullock, alternating from full-blown panic to quiet desperation and everything in between, keeps the audience invested what is, at heart, a B-movie disaster epic (not that there’s anything wrong with that, unless you’re Neil deGrasse Tyson).