See it for the visuals, but the film is about theme rather than plot

Rating: 3/10 (6 October 2013)

One of my absolute favourite cinema experiences was seeing Magnificent Desolation in IMAX 3-D. Having had a long-time interest in Project Apollo, it was amazing to sit in the audience and feel like I was actually on the moon, or in the actual spacecraft involved with the lunar landings. Knowing that I was watching history come to life left me with a lump in my throat, a feeling I still get every time I put From The Earth To The Moon in my DVD player and replay Tom Hanks' 10-part mini-series, which I do on a regular basis.
The visuals of Gravity in 3-D are no less stunning, and other reviewers, professional and amateur, have spoken well to them, in particular the opening 17-minute shot which leaves one feeling as if they, too, are right there, on a mission over the Earth.
Unfortunately, the film quickly departs from logic. The director has admitted that science has taken a back-seat to story, and this understandable - even forgivable. I can understand a certain necessity to putting all the space stations and ships on the same orbital plane in order to tell a good story.
However, there is no story here either. The director basically has opted to provide a theme - "rebirth" - and has used a space setting in order to paint this theme for the audience in sometimes subtle, sometimes broad strokes. This may appeal to the artistically minded, it will certainly clash with those, like myself, who were drawn in by the rave reviews about the technical merits of the photography.
The characterization is minimal, and perhaps most disappointing given her usual brilliant performance, Bullock is used here as a 'damsel-in-distress'. We are led to believe she has been selected for astronaut training and employment as a mission specialist, but we don't get to see her in whatever element she was chosen for. Instead, we see her fumble through routine repairs, dropping tools, complaining about space-sickness, and ultimately screaming in fright, crying, confessing to the strains of single-parenthood, admitting she can't fly the re-entry modules, but managing to do so anyway, through blind luck. And thus she is "reborn".
And in case you don't "get it", she floats in an airlock in a fetal position, wrapped in an umbilical cord for long, pointless seconds, as Clooney's character drifts off into the void, incommunicado, as she ensures the audience buys into the "rebirth" theme, before floating down the tunnel to make contact.
It's not such a bad theme, but the actual space program is about so much more than blind luck and damsels in distress. I understand movies need to have peril and conflict - which can include inner conflict. The device here of having Clooney return was handled so abruptly, I simply assumed it was a bit of science the film-makers had simply gotten wrong, and the gasps and muttering of other audience members in the cinema suggested they felt the same way. It would have been much more satisfying to see astronauts behaving like actual astronauts, and not fretting about whether or not they had "learned how to pray" correctly.
There was nothing about any (both) of these characters that made me care about them, and the fact that Bullock's survived by pushing buttons like a chimp in a food experiment actually made me a bit angry.
Such excellent photography and visuals, and two brilliant actors, are wasted here on a non-story by a director who dwelled entirely on theme.