Gravity

Gravity's opening shot would be the centrepiece of any other space film. A glowing corner of Earth fills the left-hand side of the screen while a solitary dot floats in the blackness beyond. Is it a star? Some kind of space debris? Either way, it's distant, like everything else. It takes minutes for it to become discernible, welcome minutes that give you time to drink in the view and nudge the person next to you to make sure they're as in awe as you are. There is silence except for the faint crackle of voices over a radio then some vaguely audible country and western beaming out of George Clooney's space suit, completely at odds with the stillness.



Sorry for getting a little 'A-level English student' with the descriptions but that's what Gravity's like. From start to finish, there's no let-up from the spectacle. Even when it's just a close-up on an astronaut's face, there'll be a reflection of Earth in the visor of their space suit that turns the shot into something astonishing.

It's true isn't it, that in all creative endeavours, no matter how much energy you put in or how skilled you are, there will always be something you wish you'd done differently. Ha! Director Alfonso Cuarón must be laughing in the face of that "universal truth". Gravity is the pinnacle of visual film making. I could've forgiven him for cutting out the story entirely and just wallowing in space vistas for an hour and forty minutes - it'd be like David Attenborough's Planet Earth on steroids. Yet, even though it might've been easy to forgo any real substance for style, Gravity is more than just something to look at. Unlike most films, it physically draws you in. The lack of sound in space is ruthlessly exploited to lull you into a false sense of security - some of the biggest shocks come hurtling towards you straight out of the silence. Cuarón has engineered a dizzying camera trick that makes you feel as if you are slowly spinning around and Steven Price's score, particularly over the closing scene, will give you goosebumps.

The Optimist's earlier post about film trailers almost got scrapped when the Gravity previews came out - if you haven't seen them you're excused from reading the rest of this, get yourself to YouTube immediately - but anyone who's worried that the most impressive bit of action's been ruined, can take pride in the knowledge that they are 100% wrong - it's crammed full of it. There's not much in the way of plot, but that's in no way a criticism. It works, much in the same way that Castaway did, with a single principle character, a battle for survival and a communications blackout. It's stunningly simple, utterly compelling and it twists. Boy, does it twist! Just wait for what would have been a major plot hole to effortlessly right itself and become an epic moment of realisation for Sandra Bullock's Mission Specialist Stone, and an unexpected emotional punch for us. Sandy's fantastic by the way, spending most of the film alone with no other actors to play-off - no mean feat, but she keeps it natural and maintains the urgency. She also manages to succinctly demonstrate why asthmatics are not permitted to join the space program. In case you didn't know - there's no Oxygen up there, so poor Sandy spends a lot of her time gasping and choking. It's so impressively realistic that there's a synchronised release of breathe from the audience every time she gets an air lock sealed.

There's just one thing that troubles me. In this age of outrageous film budgets, can we really believe this line that Gravity was "all shot in a studio"? If you ask me, sending Bullock and co into the upper atmosphere would've been way easier than making all that from scratch - it probably would've saved Warner Brothers a couple of quid too. After all; space travel - it's not rocket science is it?