I love the fall; cooler temps, seasonal changes (leaves, migration etc.), pumpkin...everything. But most of all, in the fall we start to get well crafted, thought provoking cinema again. This is the time when the bipolar nature of Hollywood transitions from its manic phase of the current Hollywood blockbuster (The Wolverine not withstanding), in which it attempts to tirelessly chase after box office gold (the current benchmark of box office success is now a billion dollars). Hollywood's depressive phase is often cynically referred to as "Oscar bait"(due to the majority of award winning films being released towards the end of the year, right before awards season). Alfanso Cuaron's Gravity will, I'm sure, win its fair share of awards this season. But it will be for the film's tense and gripping story line, marvelous technical proficiency, brilliant direction, performances, the philosophical themes, and homages to Stanley Kubrick.
Gravity is the story of an ill-fated mission to repair the Hubble telescope. This is not a spoiler considering the marketing for the film shows you the tragic event. One question that I had going into this film is where this sequence took place. It was so dramatic that one may assume that this was the climax of the film, and that the resolution would be the remaining crew finding a way back to earth. It isn't. That is how the film opens. For the next 90 min, the audience is treated to one the most tense, emotionally gripping and arresting cinematic experiences in recent decades. Once the film takes hold it doesn't let go. The intensity mounts as the film progresses, never really letting the audience breathe.
This film makes me want to be a film student; in only that I wish I could have the language and expertise to accurately and effectively communicate just how technically brilliant, and beautifully shot this film is. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and visual effects supervisor Tim Webber recreate space with terrifying accuracy. I would recommend that anyone who is even remotely interested in this film, to check out the trivia section on Gravity's IMDB page (link above) for just how technically difficult this film was to shoot and some of the solutions to near impossible problems that the filmmakers came up with. One thing that struck me the most was the difficulty in matching the lighting to the actors (considering that in space the light you are getting is either from the earth or the sun). I can not wait to learn more about this film and, in turn, learn how much this film changed how films are made.
I became aware of Alfonso Cuaron as a director with his intricate sci-fi dystopia Children of Men. But, Gravity has made him a writer/director of another class. At a time when film audiences have been desensitized by epic space battles, space exploration and colonization with little or no consequences; Gravity, in its opening crawl, reminds us of drastic temperature changes in space, its silence, and no air pressure. The film very directly states: "life in space is impossible". In that one sentence, Cuaron makes space scary again. His storytelling in this film pushes the audience's limits of tension and suspense. Just when you think you can't take any more, Cuaron pushes us just a little bit further (the last tense sequence was almost too much, even for me). This smartly makes the audience cling to the minimal relief the film gives, just as the characters cling to life.
Sandra Bullock needs at least an Oscar Nomination for her performance in this film. While I have yet to make up my mind on whether or not she deserves to win, the way her portrayal of Dr. Ryan Stone connects with the audience (at times we are literally seeing space through her eyes) is one of the most important aspects of the film. Without this essential humanizing, the film does not work on an emotional level. In preparation for doing most, if not all, of the emotional "heavy lifting" Sandra Bullock trained for 6 months while the film's pre-production was in its final stages and even had a conversation with current astronauts about life in space. If she does end up winning, I believe it will be far more deserved than her win for her role in The Blind Side. A film and role that recreates tired racial stereotypes and operates under the "white savior trope."
Director Christopher Nolan has stated that "in a film, when you leave earth, the parallels to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey are unavoidable." Gravity is a love letter to Kubrick. From slow rotating fetal positions, spinning pens, and evolution sequences there are many tasteful homages to the space classic. In fact, the themes of survival, death and rebirth are very heavy with each shot composition, but woven seamlessly that we, as the audience don't think about them until well after the movie ends. While, Gravity pays close tribute to Kubrick, and his themes, piecing them together in sublime sequence; Gravity falls short of reinventing them. In those moments, I was thinking about Kubrick, not about Cuaron, or his film. That being said, I really enjoyed this film, and it deserves all of the praise/accolades it gets. It is, so far the greatest space film since 2001: A Space Odyssey (even if it doesn't surpass it)....that is, until Nolan's Interstellar.
