It’s been a long wait for Alfonso Cuaron’s follow up to Children of Men, one of the great
dystopian films of the last twenty years. With Gravity, Cuaron has returned with both his attention to detail and
elegant use of long shots.
The story of Gravity
is straight forward, taking a lot from the survival genre, as we initially follow
the crew of Explorer as they attach scientific equipment to a satellite. This
changes when a freak accident causes countless pieces of debris to rip through
the shuttle and the satellite, effectively leaving them dead in the water, or
space. What follows is a desperate race to get to the next satellite or space
station that can sustain the team till the debris comes round again.
That pretty much covers all you need to know about Gravity in terms of plot, it is happy to
keep it simple and instead focus on the visuals and it’s characters, arguably
the films weakness.
But it would be wrong to start anywhere else with Gravity than the quite frankly stunning
visuals. Yes, large amounts of it are made up of CGI shots, but this is CGI on
another level, it looks real but at the same time never distracts from the rest
of the film, something that often ruins CGI heavy films.
The other great visual joy is the use of long takes. The
first shot of the film is roughly 15 minutes long. This shot isn’t just of a
conversation, or a simple tracking shot of a single character. It shows us the
Earth, the main characters as they work on a moving satellite, then follows
each of them during the debris storm. It’s worth going to see this film for the
opening shot alone.
Now, lets move onto the two characters in this film, Stone
and Kowalski, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Bar a few radio
voices, these are the only two people you are going to follow for the film.
Bullock is arguably the lead in Gravity, as it her past that is focused on more and she is one that
has any sort of character arc. As she fights to survive, we slowly have more
and more information drip fed to us about what happened to her back on Earth.
Bullock does her best with a somewhat basic script, there is very little
character work, in part that is down to the events that follow the debris storm.
It would have been interesting for her to have been given something meatier to
work with and really build out Stone.
Clooney is as charming and funny as you would expect from
him, he is the veteran up there and as a result the part plays to his
strengths. His knowledge and experience earns him the right to be so relaxed up
there. Clooney builds his character quickly, thanks to some stories he shares
with Houston as they are working on the satellite, something like this would
have greatly helped Bullocks character.
In Alien, the tag
line was ‘In space no one can hear you scream’, and thanks to Gravity, sticking to this scientific
fact, you get some really unsettling and discomforting sequences, especially
during the action set pieces, when chaos is breaking out visually, but we can’t
hear anything except the voices of the astronauts.
I had heard great things about Gravity, going into the cinema, even that it would change cinema.
While I enjoyed the film, it did fall a little short of the hype that preceded
it. This obviously, isn’t the fault of the film, critics will say what they
want and it is easy to be taken in by the hyperbole that has come out of the
film.
Gravity is a
technically stunning film that will pull people in, but will ultimately divide.
