A Night at the Theater
By Louis Lalire
Alfonso Cuarón’s visually sensational Gravity reminded me of the first time I saw Jaws. It comes from the same ancestral lineage as Steven
Spielberg’s classic thriller, in that
its plan is to throw its main character through a series of obstacles within a terrifying, contained
environment: the boat at sea in Jaws, outer
space in Gravity, and says, essentially, "let’s throw a non-stop mountain of trouble at this person, and see if they have the will to survive and make it home." Gravity executes this plan
with near-perfection, maintaining an edge-of-your-seat level of intensity throughout
its short 90-minute run time. Like Jaws,
the reason it succeeds is because it supplants an element of dread in the
audience’s head so strong that even when the characters we root for are
relaxing on screen, we can’t, because we always know that the giant shark is
still lurking, swimming circles around their feet.
The plot of Gravity does
not break any new ground, and mostly acts as a means to set up the aforementioned
“obstacle course” for Sandra Bullock, who plays first time astronaut Ryan
Stone. Stone has some personal issues back down on the blue planet, but those
elements mainly remain arbitrary in their need to project on Stone a will to
survive and a reason never to give up. George Clooney is the only other
character with a face in the film, and he's the aswer to the question: “If you had to
be stuck in space with one other person, who would it be?” He plays NASA
veteran Matt Kowalski, who is focused on breaking the all-time space walking
record, and whose super-cool and calm demeanor (also known as “Clooney-ness”)
acts as a welcomed counterbalance to Bullock’s space virgin strife.
I saw the film in
3D, and while I still think this format oftentimes detracts from the visual
experience, it did not bother or distract me during the aesthetically beautiful
Gravity. I have never been to space,
a sentiment most of us can relate to, and have little to no knowledge of how
things actually “work” in space, but the scale and movement of people and
objects in Gravity conveys a strong
sense of realism. Despite its out-of-worldliness, Gravity isn’t sci-fi. The believability of the situation it
presents, even if it’s a situation that 99.9% of the population (you know, all non-astronauts) won’t have to think about on a daily basis, changes the way
the audience experiences its own dread.
The fear we would experience if a fleet of aliens with
razor-sharp tentacles coming out of their stomachs attacked Ryan and Kowalski
is much different than the fear we experience when Ryan slowly trots to a dot
on the horizon, a space station, as the oxygen in her suit dwindles. The latter
is more tangible, a claustrophobic dread that we can all connect with. Cuarón,
who also co-wrote, co-produced and co-edited the film, and his crew, which
includes cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, take full advantage of our own
claustrophobia, filming their characters with tight frames, and pumping up the
sound of each breath they take through the thin layer of glass in their helmets. The sound design, cinematography, and editing of the
film are things to be marveled in their own right. Like in his last film, the
apocalyptic and marvelous Children of Men,
Cuarón spares cuts like the astronaut with the dwindling oxygen tank must spare
breaths: don’t use them until they are absolutely, positively necessary.
It’s all very funny though, because outer space is such a
vast expanse. With the exception of Earth, there are literally hundreds of
thousands of miles of nothing surrounding our characters at all times, yet the
audience is overcome with a sense of claustrophobia throughout the experience. Gravity is frustratingly tense, but only
in the best way possible—it grabs you, ensnares you, and doesn’t let you
breathe until its final shot. But in that final “hero” shot, our survival is
celebrated. “We made it!” we say. And we release a huge breath and realize,
that was one hell of a ride.
“Gravity”
Warner Bros. 90 minutes. Rated R.
Dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
In Theaters Now
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