Review: GRAVITY

GRAVITY  (Suspense/Thriller)
4 out of 4 stars
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Paul Sharma, Ed Harris (voice)
PG-13 for intense perilous sequences, some disturbing images and brief strong language.
Verdict:  After a much too long seven years since Alfonso Cuaron's last directorial feature, he now returns with GRAVITY, one of the most incredible theatrical experiences in recent memory and the kind of movie that will be discussed decades from now both in popular and academic circles of film.  Technologically, it is the biggest leap forward since AVATAR, or even the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it ranks with LIFE OF PI in achievements of spiritual and existential storytelling.  Truly it soars on all fronts and is one of the best films of the year and decade thus far, and the 3D is excellent as well.
YOU MAY ENJOY GRAVITY IF YOU LIKED:
LIFE OF PI (2012)
CHILDREN OF MEN (2006)
APOLLO 13 (1995)
AVATAR (2009)
ALIEN (1979)

Alfonso Cuaron's GRAVITY is one of those rare films in which you can tell you're watching something that will rock the film industry and be discussed as one of the "important films" in decades to come.  It's an achievement on multiple fronts, satisfying interests in mainstream, intellectual and artistic audiences, and taking huge leaps in the film medium in ways that you might not have realized hadn't yet been done.

George Clooney as Matt Kowalski

Sandra Bullock plays bio-medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone, a Mission Specialist on her first mission in space, where she is doing tune-ups on the Hubble Telescope, while the veteran commander of the mission, Matt Kowalski tools around in a tetherless spacewalk apparatus, mooning about never accomplishing the record for longest spacewalk, because this is his final mission.  Kowalski, Stone and their fellow crew members receive a transmission from Mission Control in Houston that the Russians have destroyed one of their satellites, which has inadvertently created a chain reaction sending a rain of deadly space debris speeding towards their shuttle at speeds faster than a fired bullet.  As they race in futility to take evasive action, the debris tears through the shuttle, leaving Stone and Kowalski the sole survivors of the disaster, alone in their space suits, running low on oxygen, and Kowalski's thruster pack as their sole method of transportation to get to assistance, while all communication with Earth are silenced.
To the naysayers who doubted a film that takes place solely in outer space with only two major performances could be engaging, you are resoundingly incorrect.  Nearly the entire film takes place in space, and there aren't any cheats of convenience like a framing story or flashback sequences; it's entirely linear.
Of course, I am not any sort of authority on  such things, but it's horribly tempting to accept this as the most realistic fictional depiction of that environment that's ever been put to film.  Thanks in part to ALIEN's famous tagline, "In Space No One Can Hear You Scream," it's semi-popular knowledge that sound waves don't travel in space (just in case you weren't aware, an opening title card offers a short briefing on the outer space environment), and the only audio in the scenes that take place outside of pressurized structures, is what the astronauts can hear in their space suits, i.e. radio interaction and interior sounds, and the musical score, written to perfection by Steven Price, which accents the absence of explosive sound effects.  At first thought, you might wonder if that would work; it does.

Sandra Bullock as Dr. Ryan Stone

The Academy Award for Best Visual Effects will be a no contest this year, both thanks to the impeccable advances in technology that GRAVITY makes and the impeccable use that is made of them.  When Cuaron and his brother Jonas (the brothers share screenwriting credits) began trying to get the film made back in 2006, they thought it would be a shorter, simpler project, filming with only two main actors, and almost entirely on blue screen sound stages, but it became evident that the technology required to tell such a story was not yet adequately developed.  Obviously there is extensive use of CGI throughout the film, but the only reason that that's apparent is the knowledge that it's the only way such environments could be staged for film.  Regardless, the effects are seamless, and the scenery is as realistic as any photography that's ever been produced by NASA missions.  Because of the nature of the film, otherwise impractically prolonged shots are utilized, allowing for lingering views of both the tremendous beauty and terror of space.  Many shots are grafted together with animation, but it's impossible to see where the computer graphics end and the photography begins, and it bewildering to try and consider how the live-action photography set within the zero-gravity environments was staged. 
Bullock, who won an Academy Award for the lackluster THE BLIND SIDE (2009), gives the performance of a lifetime in the role of a lifetime, carrying the vast majority of the film by herself, as a character who's heartbreaking, endearing, humorous and sincere in the midst of the very most adverse of condition.  Clooney provides the severely grave circumstances with much appreciated humor, playing Kowalski as a wise wise-ass of a seasoned space jockey, acting as an anchor for Stone's tumultuous state of being.
While filled out with some of the most astounding action scenes in recent memory and unparalleled visual beauty, GRAVITY is also an incredibly poetic, philosophical film, something I might explore at greater length in a later "spoiler" post.  I will say that, to use cliched terminology, it is a film about the human experience, but not in the typical sense of a particular human soul (although there's that, too).  What I mean when I say that it's a film about the "human experience," is that it's about the human being, homo sapiens, the existence of the human race.  I look forward to seeing it again, with hopes of better piecing together some of the implications in the imagery, but there's obvious (but not too forward) fetal, umbilical and Darwinian imagery scattered throughout.  It's a film about the human feelings about death, loneliness, relationships, birth and the resilience of life, among other themes.

It's not as ambitious in its musings on the existence of humanity as is Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or Tarkovsky's SOLARIS (which Steven Soderberg remade with Clooney in 2002), but it's more accessible and more engaging (certainly more so than the 3-hour art piece that was the much-revered SOLARIS), with far less pretension.  Don't get me wrong, though; I love 2001; but GRAVITY does deserve to be ranked alongside such classics, and while the impact of it can't be sufficiently read as of yet, it is clearly this year's third annual "worth-it" 3D movie (AVATAR got the movement going in late-2009, but since then 2011's HUGO and 2012's LIFE OF PI have been the only notable successors to the successful use of the  technology), and after a terribly disappointing summer season (where special effect extravaganzas and sci-fi usually reign supreme), GRAVITY is one of the best movies of the year by far and terrifically refreshing.