Huh?

Rating: 3/10 (3 November 2013)

I was not impressed. The technology behind the movie may be impressive, but I can only rate my subjective enjoyment of viewing, coming down to 3 points. Here is why: - Absence of character-based drama: I had been much intrigued by the idea of a character-based drama with a space setting. But with the number of characters quickly reduced to one, it actually had minimal interplay of characters. Also there was practically no character development. This was simplified to the main character having lost a child, and overcoming this trauma in a rather cheesy "angel" scene. I did not like Children of Men either, and wonder what it is with Cuaron and the mother-and-child theme. It was hard to emotionally relate to characters with hardly any backstory about them. - The movie was not very suspenseful, probably because the plot is an event-driven one-way success story. The main character successfully reacts to a straight-forward series of catastrophic events (board space station: check, overcome trauma: check,). Each try takes her one step further to a new physical location, but without any character related setbacks or emotional to-and-fro that could create suspense. - The movie felt rather "Hollywood" and clichéd. For me, possible suspense and emotion was instantly killed by the bombastic musical score, a major cause of cheesiness. I react badly to musical scores that tell me I should be feeling moved NOW. I feel that the movie might have been much more captivating with a reduced score, focusing on only those sounds that can really be heard in the loneliness of space. - Although I like the idea of exploring personal "rebirth" in the movie, I think that the spiritual element was not woven into the story in a consequential and layered manner involving resonance on many levels of storytelling, but rather bluntly included through a few key scenes (fetal position; evolution scene in the end of the movie etc.). Especially with the lack of character definition, these scenes thus came over as cheesy and out of context. I'd say, if you want to go metaphorical, go all the way. - To me, another movie where "pathetisch" (grand) comes over as "pathetic". I give it a 3, but I can understand reviewers who gave only 1 point for the same reasons.