Gravity (USA, 2013)
The storyline, as summarized on IMDb: “Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone — tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.”
But you know what? The tag line on the poster says everything that needs to be said: “Don’t. Let. Go.”
I read several reviews before seeing the movie. One reviewer went into a lengthy discussion of how previous directors had handled or mishandled the silence of space, giving kudos to Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey and also praising this movie’s director, Alfonso Cuarón, for mostly getting it right. Another reviewer reminisced about the sexiness of Sigourney Weaver in Alien, which gave me a hint I’d be seeing more of Sandra Bullock than the outside of her spacesuit. A couple of reviewers addressed orbital mechanics, asking whether a space disaster like the one depicted in this movie could possibly happen, the answer being a qualified yes. All the reviewers praised Gravity for its realism. So I had all these things on my mind when I went to see Gravity today.
Let me come back to that tag line: Don’t. Let. Go. Not letting go is what this movie is all about. Not only not letting go of whatever you can grab as you’re spinning helplessly in space, but not letting go of life when it seems there’s no hope. Gravity is, at heart, an inspirational movie with a feel-good message. I’m not making fun of that: it lifted me up and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Was I manipulated? You bet. But it was okay with me.
As to the silence of space: except for one brief scene I didn’t think Cuarón deserves that reviewer’s kudos, because even when there’s no radio chatter there’s almost always ominous background music on the soundtrack. To be fair, though, audiences don’t want total silence in more than short doses, and obviously Cuarón knows that. Sandra Bullock delivers the goods in several scenes that are indeed reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver stripping down to panties and t-shirt in the Nostromo’s escape shuttle. Query: do astronauts really get into their space suits in bare feet and skivvies? I somehow doubt it.
I have no opinion on the scientific validity of the movie’s space disaster scenario: if they say it could happen, I’ll buy it. I will say this, though: there are a couple of scenes where astronauts converge on other orbiting objects (the damaged space shuttle, the abandoned ISS) at way too high a rate of closure — there’s no way they’d survive the impact (momentum does not go away in zero gravity), and if they were lucky enough to miss by inches they’d be going so fast they’d rip their arms off when they grabbed hold. I’m also pretty sure a rocket scientist would say the notion of a free-floating astronaut propelling herself from a damaged space shuttle in one orbital plane to a space station in another orbital plane is ludicrous, but hey, then you wouldn’t have a movie.
Based on what little I know, the rest of the science seems authentic: the movie depicts the consequences of momentum very well; the floating balls of liquid and fire in the ISS are a nice touch, and all involved must have spent weeks studying the insides of NASA and Russian simulators — it seems to me they got all that exactly right.
If you go see the movie, most cineplexes will give you the option of seeing it in 3D. The space shots are magnificent and really deserve to be seen in 3D, which IMO has come a long way in the last couple of years. Imax would be nice too, if you live in a town that has that. Some of my friends, I’ll warn you, said the space scenes made them woozy, but I didn’t notice that. What I did notice was that I couldn’t help ducking when space debris came hurtling toward me, but that’s part of the fun.
What’s really brilliant is that Cuarón gets a feature length movie out of a simple story about an astronaut spinning around in space, untethered and adrift, an astronaut who miraculously manages to get her fingers and toes wrapped around various grab bars and struts as she whizzes past orbiting objects, a person who just Doesn’t. Let. Go, physically or spiritually, and as I said, the net effect is quite uplifting.
Some day Gravity will be a regular on the cable channels. Will I watch it every time it comes on, as I do 2001 and Alien? Damn right I will.