As a person who was always fascinated with Space , Gravity brought in a new fear into my brain.. The fear of space… Even the original ‘Alien’ didn’t bring out so much scare out of me. Nope. Never gonna be an Astronaut. Ever.
Being a swimmer , I would always imagine how great it would be if we had the power to float in Air ( yep, rather than flying , the very idea of floating made me excited ) .. But a lot of times in the movie , I had wanted to grab onto something to make sure I don’t float away.. Brilliant implementation in 3D. Surpasses Avatar in the effects department.
Imagine being in vertigo forever and ever…. spinning , spinning …( yes, you will never stop ) … Having no Re-action to your Action. Not knowing what is up and what is down …. You would puke and pass out within minutes….
Remember those 2 seconds on top of a roller coaster , where you would be in free-fall and your stomach jumps up from its comfy chair. Ya, that is how you would feel like when you are in space.. You will have no ground to relate to.. You will be in constant free fall..
like a fish out of the water…
What makes Gravity unique is that it is NOT set in the future and is set in our own time .. No laser gizmos , no inter-galactic warp travel , no cryogenic-sleep , blah blah.. This is not a Science Fiction movie. It is set in a realistic universe .. Something that could happen to the Astronauts of today..
The Cast. Gravity stars only two people.. One is Sandra Bullock and the other is George Clooney ( or rather his face ) . Being a two-person movie , of course , there is some amount of character building in the movie. George Clooney’s character( Matt Kowalski ) is shown to be an healthy cheesy Astronaut who knows the ‘Gravity’ of the situation but also takes it lightly and jokes around, This ,I guess , is mostly to make the Dr.Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) not think about the complicated situation that they are in. Who would have thought Sandra Bullock would be the character that the audience would be rooting to survive.. And who would have thought she had such a nice well toned body ?
One of my favorite shots.
One of the things I liked about the movie is that the entire movie moves along with Sandra Bullock.. We do not see any other perspective of the situation. This , in my opinion , is a very interesting and intimate type of directional style.. If the movie was taken in a different way , say for example , like in ‘Independence Day’ showing different people reacting to the situation. knowing or rather not-knowing what to do at a time like this .. But what Gravity achieves is the single narrative/ perspective view where you become one of the characters in the movie drifting along ( literally ) with the lead character.
It is a good thing that they did not show characters down’on-earth forming teams and formulating action-plans to save the crew up there. Honestly I think people wouldn’t care about two people up in space who may or may not have survived .. People would be more worried on why their satellite TVs and GPS’s aren’t working.
It would be not fair to call their situation as ‘complicated’ . Complicated situation is when you know you have a few months till the world is going to flood ( 2012 ) or when you try to plan out an attack on the invisible alien ( Predator ) or if you are stuck inside a spaceship with an ugly ass creature lurching around(Alien). All these characters had time to think, time to plan , time to collect their thoughts.
But what you find in Gravity is that you are in a situation where there is not much you can do and there is no time to even think of doing it. Gravity is one of those survival movies where you really want the person to survive rather than get killed at the end , when they made you believe everything was over ( read ‘Final Destination’ )..
Of course , This is Hollywood. There are quite a few technical inaccuracies in the movie.. To name a few , the Hubble Telescope ( where the astronauts were actually working on when the sh*t hits the fan ) , is shown too close to the Earth.. Even the Chinese Space station is just a 100 mile ‘space hike’ away from the International Space station. But nonetheless , the movie does showcase a near-death-experience of how you would feel physically and ’emotionally’ in outer space.. I stress on the emotional part , because , like I said, if given a chance I would never venture out in space .. ( well at-least till I forget about this movie). Imagining George Clooney floating around in space waiting for his oxygen to run out , is freaky enough for me..
The Soundtrack. The soundtrack in this movie is the third character in the movie. ( 4th if you count your self ). Space as being a place where sound does not travel , the aural experience of the movie comes from not the sound of things colliding but the vibrations and the tension that one would experience at such a time. An very subtle but at times pronounced background score has been incorporated in the movie.. Tracks like ‘Don’t let go’ keep you mesmerized and fall deeply into the Abyss.. Listen to it here.
Experiencing the movie in Dolby Atmos is the only way to watch this movie.
The Visuals. As a person who prefers to watch movies in good ol- 2D , this movie really changed my opinion of 3D. like I said before , the director’s camera movements and how he panned out the shots were awesome.. 360 degree shots ? Nah.. These cameras were spinning wildly.. Just thinking about the camera movements makes my head reel.
However, the view of the Earth could have been more colorful and details of Earth’s prominent features could have been showcased as well. Even documentaries like Planet Earth and Home have better visuals . So CGI Earth should be more ‘breath-taking’ IMO.
The explosions and Debris that is shown in the movie are something that I was taking in slowly. I was looking at all 4 corners of the screen to know what was happening. Something I enjoyed ( unlike the explosions in Transformers. )
And I saw the movie in regular 3D .. If you have an Imax 3D nearby , dont miss this visual treat.
Overall My Rating – 9 / 10
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