Gravity (2013) Review

Or, the first actual roller coaster ride of a film in years. 

You can watch the trailer here.

Gravity (2013) was absolutely perfect, and so much more deserving of the Best Picture Oscar than 12 Years a Slave (2013). Seriously, how can a film possibly win the following accolades but not Best Picture?

• Best Achievement in Directing
• Best Achievement in Cinematography
• Best Achievement in Film Editing
• Best Achievement in Visual Effects
• Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
• Best Achievement in Sound Editing
• Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

Of the 10 Oscar's it was nominated for it won 7. Every sum of its parts was listed as the best but it did not win best picture. The only other wins for 12 Years were Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong'o (which was thoroughly deserved) and Best Adapted Screen Play. Grrrrrrr!

Anyway, I have already digressed. I can't say I often agree with the Oscar winners so why this came to be such a surprise for me I will never know. 12 Years was written to win an Oscar and white American slave guilt won out after all. I just wish they hadn't been so obvious about it.

I'm going to try and keep this short as my posts have been intolerably wrong recently and for that I apologise. I am an arrogant critic who loves to hear the sound of her own voice it would seem. Though this blog is done for my benefit more than anyone else's so if you don't like it, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!

Anyway, let's compose ourselves shall we. Here is your IMDB synopsis;

Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone - tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.

The atmosphere (see what I did there!) throughout the film was fantastic. I haven't been made to feel in that way by Cinema for what feels like ages. It seemed like Hollywood had lost its ability to make us emphasise with a character without throwing in an hysterical tearjerker.



This will all be spoilers. If you don't want to know anything then just sit and watch the trailer for a few minutes.

Dizzying
Gravity opens with the team of three repairing a panel on the Hubble Telescope. Ryan Stone is using her skills to do the repairs, Matt Kowalski is attempting to break the record for total time spacewalking, and I can't really remember what the final guy was doing. I seem to remember he was just being a bit of a 'bro'. The stillness of everything is amazing, the slowness at which her tools escape her, the silence. It is this silence which Stone instantly admits to Kowalski is why she likes it up there.

In what seems like less than ten minutes into the film the debris hits. We have this moment of extreme clarity up in the beauty of space, with Earth and all its drama as a backdrop a million miles away, and then we are sent careening into obscurity and confusion.

From the moment Stone is sent hurtling into space we feel her nausea, we feel her desperate need to be righted, we desperately seek to find our bearings and get a sense of how to move forward but it just doesn't let up. The filming here is just fantastic. For the first time ever I really wished I had seen this in 3D. Although there may have been a strong chance I would have thrown up in the cinema. Technically I would have also loved to have watched Gravity on some kind of helmet screen while riding a Waltzer, but unfortunately we haven't had that breakthrough in the cinema going experience yet.

That is seriously the best idea I have had in ages. Now to make it work....

Even when Stone is initially rescued by Kowalski we still don't feel at peace. It is a relief to hear a voice after the comms to Houston go down, but we still feel unnerved. They are tethered together as Kowalski propels them forward towards the International Space Station (ISS), and Stone is constantly being tugged this way and that. Still flailing, still hurtling, still in constant motion. Space had given us and Stone this illusion of peace and freedom, but everything is constantly in momentum and one act of force threatens to send everything out of control. The escape we and she herself felt was a lie, and it is this acceptance that ultimately forces her to stand up to life on Earth.

Now these really are super spoilers. if you haven't turned back already do so now.

When Kowalski sacrifices himself, cutting the cord so that Stone might survive we are isolated once more. This is the seclusion that Stone has always sought, yet we quickly find it horrific, The remoteness and loneliness is intense and completely perpetuated by the silence of space. Though she is excruciatingly low on oxygen Stone manages to haul herself into the ISS and we are met with a brief moment to catch our breath. It isn't so much as relief we feel, just a brief escape from suffocation. The level of tension as we see the percentage in her tank ticking away, and her breathing gradually grow more and more laboured was the most intense scene I had experienced in a long time.

However, the 'almost' relief is short lived. We already know from Kowalski's instructions that Stone cannot get back to earth from this ship; one shuttle has already escaped and the other's parachute has been accidentally deployed so could not land. Stone must make her way to a Chinese Space Station, the Tiangong.

As Stone jumps into the damaged shuttle and makes her way to Taingong, she straps herself in and we are finally completely tethered. This is the first true relief we feel, though we know the cause is probably lost. When she decides to turn off the oxygen and let herself slip into death we readily forgive her for needing the escape. After the twisting nausea we've been through with her we need it to. You almost want her not to go back out there. You need the relief as much as her.

I'm talking about the ending now, so seriously if you haven't turned back by now it's really not my fault.

Reborn

Of course Stone turns the oxygen back on though and she does attempt to survive. This is when she starts on the path to living again, to being reborn.

Aboard the ISS, the first thing Stone must do is catch her breath, and after she strips off her suffocating suit she curls into the foetal position wearing just her underwear and slips out of consciousness. This is the beginning of her rebirth, her gestation in the womb if you will. Though we don't quite know it yet.

The truth of it doesn't come until she is back on Earth. She drags herself from the water in which she lands and hauls herself onto shore almost like the first fish to grow legs and crawl from the primordial ooze.

Stone had previously found solace in the silence of space and when she arrives back on earth the sounds of fluttering wings and buzzing of insects are almost overpowering. Yet, it's like she finally emerges from her own vacuum and can hear the music in life again. It is a sinister sound, usually associated in film with death and decay, but here it really is like music. Because we have been through this harrowing journey with her this usually horrendous, overpowering buzz is the best din we have heard since the opening credits.

Ultimately, Stone realises she had never previously sought peace, she sought isolation, and that really didn't turn out to be so nice. If she truly wants peace then she has to live, she has to live amongst people and she has to live in noise.

Give the Girl a Break
As fantastic as Gravity was, and it genuinely is one of the best things I've seen come out of Hollywood in a very long time, it did have its faults. One of those were a few instances where  felt the need to turn up the heat, as if Stone's peril wasn't dramatic enough.

One instance was the fire aboard the ISS where Stone knocks herself out with a fire extinguisher. It was still very well done, but it felt as if it had been slotted in just to ramp up the speed. I felt the greatness of the pace in Gravity is how we feel we are just being pulled along. Having an urgent danger to be addressed immediately, seemed kind of out of place in a world where the perils are gradually suffocating to death, being frozen, cooked or slowly wasting away due to lack of food or water. These slow, drawn out perils were where this fantastic tension came from and oddly the fire scene gave the tension a bit of a rest for me, instead of turning it up to eleven.

Another similar scene is where she 'lands' the shuttle in the ocean and it begins to fill with water. At this point my mind did kind of groan, but on second thought it was very much like the sudden and shocking process of being born. Light flooding in and her being forced and torn out. It was kind of the perfect end to her time in space and rebirth, I just didn't quite get it immediately. It's a clichéd metaphor, but one done so well in this instance I barely noticed it.

Emotional Overkill

One aspect I just couldn't forgive Gravity for was the inclusion of Stone's back story. It just seemed to miss the point on so many different levels.

My new film buddy, who I am sure I will introduce you to at some point, agreed with me whole heartedly and threw up a really interesting point;

"The only bits I thought it briefly fell down were when it tried to make her too much of a character in her own right. Far better when she's just an avatar for viewer's presence in the situation...like she's the roller coaster carriage you're sitting in."

In case you didn't notice, his quote was probably the inspiration for the subtitle of this review.

Sandra Bullock's performance as Stone was amazing. Completely Oscar worthy. Though I do not doubt Cate Blanchett probably also deserved The Best Actress Oscar for her role in Blue Jasmine (2013) I haven't seen it so wouldn't want to comment. However, I'm glad Blanchett did win, as she has certainly deserved one long before now.

Bullock managed to make her performance completely harrowing and make a role completely her own while still managing to be this empty vessel (I love the reference to her as an 'avatar') for us to experience the film through. I think this required a really unique and special talent so hugely applaud Bullock. I am a great fan of hers anyway and this has only cemented my utmost respect for her.

However, it seemed someone didn't quite have enough faith in her and I really can't think why. Gravity puts together this horrendous back-story about a young daughter who is killed in a freak accident in the school playground to give us an extra dose of empathy. I hate when children are used in this way. It's like the Deep Impact effect. (Seriously, go back and watch that film. Every time they panic that the audience aren't emotionally invested enough they hold up a crying child, at one point completely literally.) Stone really didn't need a tragic back-story to be tragic. It showed an offensive and completely unfounded lack of confidence in the story and Bullock as an actress. It had a 'producers' stamp all over it.

When Stone finally is 'born again' on earth the memory of the daughter is hit home again. Again I don't think it was needed for this context. Stone could just be your standard person, bored of every day life and wishing for an escape from normalcy and the general population in space. In fact that would have facilitated the Bullock as a vehicle element perfectly, in that her isolation is just a symptom of the standard human condition.

The Clooney Affect
I feel like I need to mention George Clooney, mainly because he is, well Clooney. He was charming as ever as Kowalski, but I wish there was a little more to him than the suave grin, strong jaw and all American persona. He was fine, he was watchable, he was Clooney. I rarely often feel like there is more to say than that.

Also, I felt his appearance in an hallucination to Stone a tad weak. The whole point of him detaching himself to save her was that she was all alone. Stone had to call upon her own training, experience, and lust to live in order to get back to Earth. Having Clooney come back as a mirage to facilitate this was offensive. Saying once again Stone couldn't do it alone, and even when doing it alone Clooney would have to magically come back to help her along. If it was a spiritual element, it seemed odd in space. If it was a crisis in Stone's confidence, then I don't think she would have been able to push herself out of the situation. I don't think it was a gender thing, thankfully, but it was sad all the same. Yet another moment of doubt that Bullock or Stone could carry this off.

To Conclude...
Genuinely just divine. It really was a roller coaster ride of a film and although that is a horrendous cliché, this is the first time I have ever truly thought it an adequate metaphor. I have no doubts that it should have won the best picture Oscar this year, even if I didn't have all the issues with 12 Years a Slave that I do (you can read about that here) and is probably the most Oscar worthy film I have seen out of Hollywood in a very long time. It felt like the perfect mix between independent and blockbuster cinema and I really hope we see more like it coming.

And I haven't even touched on all of its other Oscar winning attributes. If you haven't seen it, do it, NOW!