Review: Gravity

Rating: Worth a matinee on a big screen.

Summary: In the second week of release, I had wanted to originally skip this movie like a rogue asteroid. This rational had surrounded the casting of two Hollywood heavyweights, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Their collective science fiction offerings had provided an abysmal to non-existent track record. For starters, George Clooney’s last voyage in space, Solaris (2002), had embodied the metaphor as lifeless as the vortex of a black hole. On the other hand, Sandra Bullock hadn’t necessarily worked successfully in any dramatic performances since Speed (1994).

Upfront, Gravity’s tempo had dispensed immediately with exposition by thrusting into space Dr. Ryan Stone, Sandra Bullock. Providing calm, George Clooney had depicted Matt Kowalski as the practical and ego-centric veteran. The opening sequence, many thereafter, had demonstrated the film’s ability in composing on the edge, dramatic excitement. At times, you had figuratively felt yourself falling into the chaotic action. Rotating camera angles and zoomed out views had reinforced the remote perspectives of the script’s characters. Another element, audio had focused on the astronauts’ experience of breathing, the silence of space, and radio communications. Along with selective application of the music score, audio had further underlined the emotion impact of the action. Anchoring the other two elements, the theme of man versus nature had driven the story. With that theme, the characters had explored their own responses to adversity. In exploring that frailty, the film had reaffirmed a theme of mine, “What’s inside you?” In the context of the life’s impromptu challenges, we had not known the answer without challenging ourselves or getting up when knocked down.

While leveraging core elements of great cinema, Gravity had changed my opinion of Bullock and Clooney. Gravity’s expansive shots of the earth and space had rightfully deserved the canvas of a large movie screen. In the end though, the merits of the story had won me over.