Review of Gravity (2013) by Maximiliano D — 27 Sep 2015

Holyyyy smokes! Never have I seen something as visually awesome as Gravity. It would be impossible to fully describe how amazing this movie was as a whole. Alfonso Cuarón's "Gravity" is astounding achievement, an enthrallingly beautiful film that raises the watermark for big budget filmmaking and never sacrifices emotional resonance for computer generated bombast.

Its power wouldn't properly translate to a 55 inch HD TV or worse yet, a 4 inch smart phone display. It truly is a cinematic event. Following two astronauts on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope that goes horrifically wrong, the film opens simply but effectively with a shot of Earth majestically hanging in space.

Our planet looks stunning but seeing it from such a distant perspective evokes a kind of subtle anxiety. Before everything goes catastrophically wrong, we are made to understand that space is vast and immutable and the safety home is impossibly far away.

The idea is further driven home in a scene where Sandra Bullock's mildly depressed Dr. Ryan Stone absent-mindedly drops a screw, momentarily forgetting that once something is lost in space, it's gone forever.

Thankfully Cuarón found a strong lead in Sandra Bullock, a good actress who has quietly built a respectable resume by turning down roles as some anonymous action hero's screaming wife. And though she's turned in quality work before, "Gravity" is Bullock's finest hour.

She has to not only be the human core of special effects driven film but is also the only character on-screen for the majority of its running time. A lesser performer would have been swallowed up by the film's infinite vistas and sparse narrative but Bullock keeps the focus on her struggle for survival against the desolate vacuum and there never comes a point when you forget that what are you watching is deeply human story.

Cuarón has already proven himself to be as supremely talented a cinematic stylist but with "Gravity" he does his peers one better by using his visuals devices in service of telling his story as opposing to straining against it.

By subtlety shifting from a third-person to a first-person perspective and filling the screen with verisimilitudic detail, Cuarón and his brilliant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki slowly take the viewer from uninvolved observer to active participant.

With every frozen tear drop and fogged up helmet, Cuarón makes his world a real place to the extent that when a bunch of satellite debris came rushing at Stone, I wasn't worried about her being chopped in half, I was terrifying of shrapnel tearing into my own flesh.

"Gravity" restores the faith, that all of the cinematic art form's masterpieces haven't already been made and that it is still possible for a true artist to make an adult and rich film within the increasing commodified studio system.