Don't let go of this movie!

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2017)

As the film starts, we are introduced to a title card that reads as follows: "At 600km above planet Earth, the temperature fluctuates between +258 and -148 degrees Fahrenheit. There is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure, no oxygen. Life in space is impossible." While this opening is doing it's stuff, a haunting score (consisting of radio interference noises and string players doing a crescendo from the Devil's backyard) can first be heard only distantly. But each time a terrifying fun fact about space blurs onto the screen, the riveting concoction of sounds gets louder and louder. When the final sentence reveals itself and the title of the film (Gravity) lights up the screen, the floor vibrates beneath you, and the contents of your stomach bubble up. And, finally it stops (and stops very abruptly) and we encounter space. Beautiful space accompanied by earth's heavenly face. It smiles at us in pure silence while radio voices whisper in the distance, and our heroes drift into the scene. A great movie begins. Originally, three well rounded astronauts were faced with a by-the-books mission to repair the Hubble telescope. Unfortunately and rather predictably, things go horribly wrong when satellite debris caused by a Russian missile is catapulted throughout earth's orbit at the same velocity of a speeding bullet ,and turns the astronauts' ordinary work day in space into a catastrophe that leaves only two alive out of the astronauts and the Explorer crew. In order to return to earth, the sole survivors work together to succeed in survival.
Of the alive is the brilliant medical engineer, Dr. Ryan Stone. A first timer out of the nurturing atmosphere of earth, she has very little experience in space, and even less experience in the problem they face. She works by the books and is rather robotic in her character. In the beginning of the film, we are ignorant of her origin and future causes. Later in the film, Stone's accompanying survivor bring out confessions of her life on earth. She tells of her four year old daughter Sara, and her untimely death "She was playing tag at school - slipped, fell, hit her head and that was it. The stupidest thing." After being asked what she'd be doing on earth at their present time. Her answer was driving without a destination. She wakes up, goes to work , and then just drives, with the radio playing. Matt Kowalski (great name for an astronaut) accompanies Stone in their solitude. A seasoned astronaut (deeming this particular flight as his last before retiring) who has very little yet very entertaining stories to tell, and whether the stories he tells are factual or not, it is hard to tell (very similar to Rochester, in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre). He has quick wit and charm, like most of George Clooney's character's. Sandra Bullock is great in this movie. There aren't many characters (after Kowalski's death, she is the only character for the majority of the movie) in this movie, she faced high difficulty in being good in this movie. Nonetheless, she did a great job, and I can't imagine any other actress in the role. Even though George Clooney has played this type of character before (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Ocean's Eleven) I don't think that any other actor is fit for it. He was perfect for the role, and played it well. I can imagine the casting team saying "We need a George Clooney type for this character." There are many things that contribute to this movies greatness, but three protrude in my mind. The cinematography, the visual effects, and the musical score. Emmanuel Lubeski's cinematography in this film is astoundingly modern and free. The opening scene of the film is a twelve and a minute long continuous shot, where the camera moves freely through space. The camera moves like some unknown entity, which is somewhat unsettling. Space has no up or down, so making the "unnatural" twists and turns in the camera's movement actually seems very natural. Something that is also very incredible are the first person shots, where we are the character, and we see what Ryan sees. It feels almost like a video game. The only thing in this movie that isn't made from a computer are the actors faces, and we aren't even sure about that.The visual effects in Gravity are all digital, but they look completely real. The visual effects are so painstakingly detailed that even the positions of the stars are accurate with the real thing. There isn't a flaw that I can spot with the visual effect - simply astounding Steven Price's Academy Award winning score for this movie is very grand. There is a wide variety of instruments (glass armonica, strings, winds, computers)that work together like cogwheels in a clock. Do to the lack of sound in space, they've filled in those soundless moment with music. When an explosion occurred, there was an explosion of music, when a massive piece of debris passed by and just barely misses our heroes, a massive crescendo followed by a decrescendo happened with music. Another thing that happens quite often in Gravity is massive crescendos that continually inch their way up the scale and are cut off very briefly. This is very disorienting, and adds to the intensity of the film. This movie isn't just here to be beautiful and spectacular. It serves as a guide to survival, and I don't mean from a debris storm in space. This movie is about healing, and letting go. It's very metaphorical actually, Ryan's physical body mustn't let go, if she did she would go flying into oblivion. She must also let go mentally. She must let go of her daughter in order to truly live. "No more just driving. Let's go home!"