‘Gravity’: A Few Spoilery Impressions [Review]
“Beautiful, don’t you think?” It’s the first piece of dialogue we heard all those months ago when the trailer for Gravity was first released. George Clooney’s voice over a stunning score describing the radical sunrise is just as memorable all these months later. It’s all the dialogue we needed to hear, as it quite simply expresses the pure cinematography of what will quickly become a blueprint for the landscape of sci-fi films.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is possibly the most imaginative masterpiece we will see this year. It goes without saying that this project was made with a heavy, and rather meticulous hand, and it shows from the first frame on. Terrifyingly fantastic, Cuarón has crafted a visual symphony of an exploration we couldn’t dare to dream up. Gravity opens with medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) repairing a broken satellite. As seen in the countless promotions, things go terribly awry for the pair, kicking off an anxiety inducing 90-minute journey.
When walking away from a showing of Gravity in IMAX 3D, one’s mind will be completely shattered after the immersive experience, but somehow we here at The Inquisitr have managed to pull at least a few impressions from this magnificent journey through space.
1. The visuals are at the forefront for Gravity
From the start of the film the audience is sucked into the astounding voyage through space. There’s a 20-minute single shot of the film’s stars floating in space, and while it’s exhilarating, it’s also unnerving to be that enveloped by a screen from the get go. There’s no getting used to the setting of Gravity, as we are catapulted into space with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, and are constantly being hit with a new and stressful task to deal with. What feels more like an immersive experience in part to Cuarón’s 3D work, is felt throughout the whole film, and it only heightens with each catastrophe that occurs.
2. Gravity goes beyond the trailer
By now everyone has seen the trailer of Bullock’s character getting hit with debris and spiraling out in space. The trailer of Gravity leads one to believe that the whole film will circulate around this singular event, but fortunately, and unfortunately given your blood pressure, it does not. Cuarón has made sure to torture Bullock’s Ryan Stone for the full duration of the film. Amazingly, the film starts with the debris and the impossibility of Stone’s situation gets worse with every passing minute. By the end of the film one will wonder if it’s even possible for Stone to survive the ordeal.
3. Sandra Bullock is at the top of her game
Bullock might have earned an Academy Award for The Blind Side, but Gravity is her best work to date. Bullock plays engineer Ryan Stone, a woman who is mourning the death of a child, and essentially mirrors the audience during her time in space. She is completely out of her element. Obviously this isn’t exactly something that Ryan Stone signed up for when the first set of debris plummets toward her and sets her adrift from Kowalski. Although the visuals truly act as the star of the film, Bullock certainly keeps up with Cuarón’s vision by playing on the tension-filled landscape. There’s not a second that passes that Bullock isn’t distressed throughout the experience, and it’s in part to her myriad of emotions that it’s felt in full force. On the other side of Bullock’s performance is Cuarón’s explicit attention to detail. The most adrenaline-fueled parts of Gravity are when Cuarón brings the viewer into Bullock’s helmet with a first-person perspective for a realistic effect.
4. George Clooney is not the hero
If you’re going to see Gravity because you’re dying to see Clooney save the day, you won’t see that here. In fact, Clooney is used as a lending hand to the larger vehicle, which is Sandra Bullock’s tremendous performance. What’s refreshing about Gravity is that Clooney does not come to Bullock’s rescue as one might expect him to. Sure he has all of his Clooney’isms in tact: he’s witty, humorous, and tells rambly stories about his life back on earth, but that’s where the Clooneyisms stop. For most of the film, this is a one-woman show, and given the obsessive nature Cuarón took to portraying realism in the outer limits of space one will quickly understand why Clooney physically can’t lend a helping hand.
5. At the heart it’s a survival story
Don’t go into Gravity expecting to experience fully developed storylines with formulaic set ups, and romantic undertones, because you won’t get them in this film. Alfonso Cuarón has imagined a world that goes past the confines of what a regular “action” film places itself in. At the heart this is about Ryan Stone’s survival story, and while films have been hung on a single event, they haven’t been set up in the same way Gravity has. While the plot could feel thin, the visual spectacle Cuarón creates in place of it never allows the audience to feel like Gravity comes up short.
GRAVITY is out now in theaters.
