Review: Gravity

I haven't done a movie review in a long time, and this is a film that I've been looking forward to all year long, so why not?

In short, Gravity is absolutely amazing.

The first shot of the film is a huge image of the Earth from space, and gradually the space shuttle Explorer docked with the Hubble Telescope comes into view.  It's breathtaking, and the total lack of sound beyond some garbled radio communications between the shuttle and NASA Control in Houston.  In fact, aside from the dialogue and music, there is almost no sound in the film.  Any sound of knocking on doors, drills, or buttons being pushed are largely muffled.  As scientifically accurate as this is (and the film opens with some text laying out this fact), it's still unsettling.  In an age when film relies largely on sound to build suspense through explosions, metal scratching on metal, and thrusters firing, the film is actually more suspenseful at times because there is no sound.

Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a mission specialist technician working with Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and a team of astronauts on maintenance work on the Hubble Telescope.  An accident leaves the shuttle destroyed and only Stone and Kowalski survive.  Matt has to keep Ryan calm as they form a plan on how to survive and get back to Earth.

Any movie that is largely a one-man or two-man show is extremely difficult because the audience really has to care about the main character in order for the movie to work.  This idea worked in Cast Away and I Am Legend, but it failed miserably in The Woman in Black.  Gravity is probably the strongest film of this type because of how director Alfonso Cuaron puts the audience in Ryan's perspective throughout the film.

On more than one occasion, the film takes a first-person perspective so the audience sees exactly what Ryan sees.  The first time Cuaron uses this technique is right after the shuttle explodes and Ryan is left tumbling in space.  She can't stop tumbling, and is crying out for anyone to respond to her calls for help.  Her breathing becomes sharper and faster, and even though we aren't even 10 minutes into the movie, the audience is doing the exact same thing.

Even though this is essentially a "man vs. nature" film, space is a very different beast than any other natural foe in film.  It's dark, silent, and filled with nothing.  It's frightening, and the tension is revved up to another level in Cuaron's visual style of very, very, very long takes throughout the film.  I'm talking continues takes of over 15 minutes at times.

Rarely does a film truly need to be seen in IMAX and/or 3D in its theatrical release, but this is definitely that kind of film.  Cuaron made a film where the audience actually feels like they are with the characters in space; it isn't just about having pretty stuff to look at.  The audience becomes an active participant in the entire film from this point on.

Gravity is probably the best film I've seen thus far this year, and even more intense than World War Z was.  I have a feeling that it will lose something when made available for home viewing, so I may have to see it at least one more time in theaters.