Amid suggestions that film is being superseded by television as the superior visual form of art and entertainment, Gravity (directed by Alfonso Cuaron) is what cinema needed. Sure, the likes of Breaking Bad and The Wire offer deep character development and scope that the big screen simply doesn’t have the time to, but a film like this reminds us of the unique pleasures only the movie theatre can offer. Gravity is not a work that can be appreciated on a laptop screen, or a HD television, or even a poor quality cinema; it is a grand statement, a film that justifies the existence of cinema, and, above all, an utterly thrilling ride.
Gravity’s most
prominent cousin is 2001: A Space Odyssey,
but whereas Kubrick’s timeless masterpiece is often described as operatic, Cuaron’s
film is more of a ballet. Where the former film is as grandiose in its themes
as it is in its length, Gravity is
lighter on its feet and graceful, with a vastly simpler plot and shorter
running time. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer and Matt
Kowalski (George Clooney) an astronaut both on a space shuttle mission, before
trouble arrives in the form of lose space debris that is hurtling towards them
from afar. From here on in, proceedings essentially become a fight for survival
as the pair is put through no end of terrifying ordeals that the deadly environment of space has to offer.
These ordeals are presented as beautifully as they are
frightening. Like many of the best films, Gravity
creates a unique universe that viewers immerse themselves in, and the
universe here is stunning, particularly the view of earth that looms always in the background. Like the objects in the mise-en-scene, the camera
floats and drifts around, sometimes adopting the point of view of one of the
characters and rotating round and round. It may sound disorientating, but the
effect is rather weightless and enthralling, and is quite unlike anything
experienced before in the cinema.
Anyone who saw Cuaron’s preceding film Children of Men will remember the thrilling way its best scenes
were shot in single, super-long takes, and Gravity
features a similar sparsity of cuts. On one level the technical ingenuity
can be marvelled at, but, crucially, these special effects are not frivolous
but instead intrinsically linked to the content of the film. By constantly
moving in continuous takes, it is rendered perfectly clear that in space, there
is no right way up, or up or down. The same goes for the 3D effects in the
film; given the very three-dimensional environment the film is set in the form
feels appropriate, while objects that fly just before your face are not
gimmicks but backed up by poignancy and real beauty, like the tears that escape
Ryan’s face into zero-gravity.
Much has been written pointing out the occasional scientific
flaw in the film’s action, but these details are relatively minor and don’t
take away from the fact that Gravity
is more believable thriller than fantastical sci-fi. In fact, another thing it
shares with 2001 is a commitment to
realism is space, with objects obeying the laws of zero gravity and making no
noise when floating in the vacuum of space. The sounds we do hear, meanwhile, are
brilliantly effective to, with eerie crescendos of sounds juxtaposed with deathly
silence.
Another apparent similarity with 2001 is a theme of birth. Images of Ryan coiled in a foetal
position and that of wires that attach to the characters like umbilical cords, as
well as the film’s finale, remind us of the space child that appears in the
final shots of Kubrick’s film. But whereas the space child rounds off a film
full of ideas that purports to be deeply philosophical, Gravity’s ideas are conceived only as subtexts, secondary in
importance to its sensual thrills. Among these more weighty themes appear to be religion and faith, of which
some references are included to be taken
or left, while the choice to focus on Sandra Bullock’s character – something of
an everywoman rather than an everyman – instead of George Clooney’s could be admirably
read as a feminist statement, given the rarity of female leads.
In short, Gravity
fully merits the enormous hype it has received, and with universal adoration
from the critics and fantastic performance at the box office, 2013’s best film
is surely Gravity.
SP
No comments:
Post a Comment