Hanging by a thread: the awe of Gravity

Once in great while a film captures the imagination of the public and ascends to the lofty sphere of a bona fide phenomenon – films like Titanic, Avatar or The Exorcist, to name a few. Gravity now joins that list of particularly rare films that don’t just serve up entertainment, they give the audience an experience like they’ve never had before. At turns both epic and intimate, Gravity is an incredible breath of fresh air. Director Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men) has given us something new and utterly compelling – yes, something new.

When I first heard the plot of Gravity, I was a little underwhelmed. Sandra Bullock, floating for her life, just her? Isn’t there a Thor sequel about to come out? I could not have been more wrong. Gravity begins with a 17 minute uninterrupted shot. I went in knowing this, but was never conscious of it. After about ten minutes, it suddenly occurred to me: Oh, my God – they haven’t cut yet! – because I was completely spellbound. When that part of my brain began trying to process how what I was seeing had been achieved, it basically short-circuited. The camera placement, the movement of the characters around the orbiting structure, Clooney in his jet pack, circling the shuttle, the overwhelming sense of reality, of hanging miles above the Earth – the feeling of each point of existence being a complete precipice – everything looked so completely real and convincing with no sense of artifice. These must be visual effects – but how the heck did they do it? You feel completely immersed and there. Then you immediately stop trying to analyze because the movie pulls you back into the moment – into “reality” – as things begin to unwind.

There isn’t just one catastrophe in Gravity – things go horribly wrong more than once. There are sequences in the film where my heart was in my throat and the anxiety level was uncomfortably high. Highest possible praise must to go to Sandra Bullock here, who’s a revelation. She anchors the emotional reality of this film with phenomenal heart. When disaster strikes, her character isn't just adrift in space – she’s struggled to just continue existing in life after coping with horrible grief – she’s also adrift psychologically, and that feeling of hanging by a literal and figurative thread connect her to the audience in a powerfully compelling way. Gravity is full of awe and terror – but it never loses sight of emotion – despite the icy cruelty of the environment, and I suspect that this, combined with the novelty of a “being there” experience is why this picture is resonating so strongly. Despite the fact that you’re seeing a whole new level of what’s possible with effects technology, it never feels like visual effects – and perhaps that’s the real breakthrough.

Lately I’ve avoided most 3D presentations as gimmicks – not here. Gravity was designed to make maximum use of the format in ways the serve to further immerse you, evoke the grandeur of scale and the terror of simple physics. If you can find IMAX 3D, all the better.

Space has always been a source of inspiration – a canvas of awe and fear. Gravity gives us that same sense of wonder we had in the Apollo era – of men and machines – of the engineer as superhero – but puts us there in a way we've never experienced before. Gravity unflinchingly shows us how exploration can quickly turn to survival – but never lets us forget that the same spark ignites both impulses. A new era of filmmaking possibilities appears to have arrived – Cuarón has taken his own giant leap here. Highest possible recommendation.