Gravity (2013) | Movie Review
Premise: When debris from the planet’s orbit destroys the space shuttle they’re repairing and kills the rest of their crew, astronauts Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski must find a way back to Earth before the debris circles around again.
MPA: PG-13
Caveats: Pervasive suspense and mayhem; disturbing images of dead bodies, including a particularly gruesome one; a woman in slightly provocative undergarments; some profanity and crass language, including an obscenity.
Suggested audience: Mature Teens+Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
Written by: Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris
Produced by: Heyday Films, Esperanto Filmoj
There are films I’m kicking myself for deliberately not seeing on the big screen, from the two-night-only Return of the King 20th anniversary re-release (I was too young to see Lord of the Rings in theaters during their original runs), to the first James Cameron Avatar, to Mad Max: Fury Road. But three home viewings in, the film I’m most kicking myself for skipping in theaters is Gravity.
The reason I didn’t see Gravity in theaters is because, frankly, it looked too intense for me at the time. Nowadays, such intensity would be a selling point.
As Speed is the definition of a cinematic thrill ride in my eyes, Gravity is Speed’s sci-fi sister, from its one-word title named after a scientific concept, to its simple premise executed with masterful tension, to its boarding of Sandra Bullock into vehicles in danger of exploding that contain images of Saint Christopher.
Even better, Gravity has more on its mind than the rompy Speed does.
For all of Gravity’s thrilling technical prowess — from the immaculately staged imagery to the equally immaculate musical score, it has the most character-driven use of extensive CGI I’ve ever seen. Ryan Stone’s journey of learning that there’s more to life than what she’s lost makes the film as powerful dramatically as it is awe-inspiring technically, as life-affirming as it is terrifying.
Granted, the moments that are clearly made for a 3D gimmick do take me out of the experience, and I hear you enjoy this movie less the more you know about the physics of space, hence why it's best to consider it science-fiction.
What blows my mind as much as the filmmaking and storytelling achievements themselves is the fact that producers risked 100-million dollars on an original standalone eighty-odd-minute survival thriller with no kid appeal that went on to see both a huge box office profit and seven Oscar wins out of ten nominations. I doubt such a success would ever happen in today’s cinematic landscape.
Again, if I had experienced this in theaters, it would have been one of the defining film viewings of my life. But even seeing it on the small screen, I feel almost as renewed by the end of those eighty-odd minutes as Ryan Stone does.