A month or so ago, when Alfonso Cuaron's visually stunning film Gravity arrived in theatres, famed astrophysicist and model for one of my favorite memes ("Watch out, we got a badass over here") Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to criticize the film's scientific holes. He did so with love in his heart though, concluding that he "enjoyed Gravity very much".
I felt the same as deGrasse Tyson after seeing the heart-wrenching and extremely stressful film. Not that I could even begin to understand the science (or lack thereof) behind Gravity. But simply put, the film is not about being lost in space so much as it is about suffering from clinical depression and choosing to persevere.
*As always, spoilers ahead!*
Gravity focuses on two astronauts: Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). The two (plus a third guy who dies in the first 20 minutes) are taking a spacewalk to repair a hubble telescope when a cloud of unexpected space debris (from a destroyed satellite) hits them, severing Stone from her tether and sending her spiraling into open space.
Kowalski, who is less a three-dimensional character in his own right and more just George Clooney in a spacesuit, finds Stone and, with the use of a jet pack, heads towards a Russian space station. The plan is to use the space station's small escape pod to zip over to another space station (a Chinese one) and use that station's capsule which is equipped to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. Still with me? So, basically, the whole "Sandra Bullock lost in space" part of the film is only a small portion of the movie as a whole and it's more about her making her way to the space station with the correct equipment to get back to earth.
So (and seriously, major spoiler here), Stone and Kowalski make it to the Russian space station, but at the last minute, the tether between the two breaks and, though Stone is able to hold on to Kowalski with a parachute-type thing, he realizes that he's dragging her away from the station and cuts himself loose to save her--so then he spirals out into space, directing her to continue into the space station to save herself.
And this is really where the meat and potatoes of Sandra Bullock's performance emerges. We learn earlier that Stone had a four year old daughter who died. She doesn't have a spouse and doesn't speak of any other family or friends. It seems unbelievable that NASA would send a person clearly in grief with little or no social support into space, but whatever! It's a movie! While many actresses might be tempted to overplay Stone's agony--with weeping and gnashing of teeth and all--Bullock plays her like the actual mother of a dead child might act. When she talks about her little girl, her voice goes flat. Her eyes go a little dead. The way Stone has dealt with her child's death is to let it crush her so completely, that she can't convey an emotional response. This seemed very realistic to me and very much how a depressed person would act--shutting down in order to survive.
As Stone attempts to save herself despite mishap after mishap, there are moments were she is ready to lay down and die. I didn't blame her at all. The agony of losing her child combined with the horror and loneliness of space would have made me want to turn up the carbon monoxide and drift off into oblivion myself. But a vision of the unsinkable Kowalski gets her back on track. Kowalski's insistence on Stone's survival reminded me, perhaps oddly, of Titanic. The same dynamic between Rose and Jack is present between Stone and Kowalski, minus the romantic element: he's a charismatic guy who is optimistic in the face of death, and willing to nobly sacrifice himself to save another human being. It's a bit Hollywood, but again--I was suspending some serious disbelief with this whole movie.
I spent most of the movie curled up in a little ball in my seat due to the stress and tension of the film, but needless to say--Sandra Bullock fucking makes it. She rides her fiery little capsule back to earth and ends up in some lake in Asia somewhere. As she crawls to the shore and tests her wobbly legs out, it's a primal scene. She is an animal that chose to live despite all the shit life threw in her direction.
To sum up: what I didn't like about Gravity was the lack of scientific realism, which seemed to be sacrificed in service the the emotional heart of the film. I also thought George Clooney's character and performance, while not bad per se, was basically just George Clooney playing himself in space. He was a little too cute and charismatic for the role of someone who knows they're going to die.
But what I did like was Sandra Bullock's rock solid performance as a woman who chooses the harder path: life, with all its pain, over death. Also, the cinematography is beautiful and is one of the biggest draws of the film--see it in 3D, and in IMAX if you can. It looks VERY realistic (as far as I know, since I've never been to space).
If you can suspend your disbelief and surrender yourself to this emotionally wrenching film, Gravity does come off as a small masterpiece from a virtuoso director.
4 stars for the film itself, plus .5 for the exceptional visual effects = 4.5 out of 5 stars
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