Review of film Gravity

I was expecting a great deal from the film Gravity by director Alfonso Cuaron whose other films namely Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men I have loved.  Furthermore I have a special place in my heart for Mexican directors, they're risk takers and more often than not the risks pay off.  Gravity is an ambitious film and a departure for this director.  It's successful on many levels especially from a technical point of view and the jaw dropping cinematography which must have taken countless hours of refining to achieve.  The problem is space itself, it's not a very interesting place in which to spend a couple of hours or maybe it's just me.  I have never been particularly attracted by the idea of space travel, it leaves me cold and shivering and this movie does nothing to alleviate my fear.  Space is not a fun place to be and if that was the intent of the movie then it's certainly successful on that count.  We follow the journey of medical engineer Ryan Stone played by Sandra Bullock and astronaut Matt Kowalski played by George Clooney as they attempt to survive after having more or less been cast adrift in space tethered to each other by the flimsiest of thread.

Basically that's the story in a nutshell.  The experience with the help of the 3D technology is meant to immerse you in that environment.  As a viewer you're often behind the mask of Ryan Stone as she struggles to breathe with oxygen depletion in her suit quickly threatening to overcome her.  We hyperventilate with her as she tries to negotiate free falling in space with little to anchor her to anything solid.  It is a frightening experience and one which I would not particularly like to duplicate.

I have a couple of problems with the film.  I've decided that 3D is just not for me.  Yes objects float in space and appear to come towards you, yes there is more definition, yes there is the possibility of immersing oneself in an alien environment but it doesn't grab me the way it should.  Maybe I'm just weird but to me it overemphasizes the totally artificial nature of the medium thus instead of bringing me closer it moves me further away.    Furthermore once you've gotten over the awe of space, the environment itself is pretty boring, except for fleeting glances of earth curved and beautiful with all of its colors reflected in the masks of the astronauts, there's really not that much to look at.  It's dark and foreboding.  At the same time the movie brought forth in my mind all the now useless junk which is orbiting somewhere above us and which we keep sending up there, it's a giant repository of now defunct technology forever doomed to circle and circle or do whatever objects that can never land do in space.  Space is not clean, it's dirty and it's full of man made debris, in fact it's those very same debris which cause the fatal accident in the film.

Sandra Bullock does a good job of appearing scared but we know so very little about her that it's hard to fully empathize with her character.  It's not an Oscar worthy performance, there just isn't enough subtlety in it.  I also had a problem with the casting of George Clooney as Matt Kowalski, not sure what it is about the name but it just didn't fit the persona.  Clooney at this point in his career has become bigger than life, he's just too Clooneyesque to ever be really taken seriously in this role.  He comes off as Ocean's Eleven Clooney with the self-referential I'm so handsome kind of guy.  

Somebody else pointed out that the scene where Bullock takes off her suit and is down to her skivvies, meant to emphasize vulnerability or maybe a shout out to Ripley's Alien, is not realistic.  In a suit you're tied to all sorts of wiring in order to facilitate bodily functions which totally makes sense, where do you pee or defecate if you're stuck orbiting in space.  It's a moot point I know and it's more effective to show her in her undies and have women in their forties despair at how great Bullock looks and how much work at the gym there's still left for them to do to ever achieve that look.  I myself am over 40 and have given up.

In conclusion I liked it, it lagged a little in parts, I didn't love it.  I give it a cautious recommendation.