Flying Circus in Outer Space

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2014)

Gravity has all the flashy appeal of a pop-up book whose pictures you view with 3-D glasses. This is not a bad thing in respect to this film. Outer Space is a marvelous phenomena to experience, and watching Sandra Bullock soar out of the background into the foreground is a wonderful thing to behold. Especially when she is moving through such a vast area of vacuum where orientation to concepts like 'right-left', 'up-down', and 'backwards and forwards' seem profoundly negotiable.
The film has a novel feel of authenticity to it, hearkening back and making one recall '2001: A Space Odyssey'. The truth is just seeing Bullock and Clooney explore the dimensions of their craft and using their tools would have probably been enough to sustain interest in this movie. That along with interaction with their fellow crew members once they returned through the airlock. But an attempt was made to give Bullock's character a back story and as such was passable as it did not detract from the suspense, but also did not really add to the storyline.
These are probably the two areas where the film falls down. This could have been a film about nothing more than the human interaction of crew members in Outer Space completing routine tasks and missions on the spacecraft they were trained to service. Every now and then revealing more and more of each other's back stories as they cheerfully went along; encountering the stray problem here and there. The setting is so novel it really needed nothing more than this.
Recently I read in my studies that people often think of Film as being the bastard cousin of Theater. The actual fact is it is more like the Circus with all its stunts and special effects, visual slight of hand and scenic misdirection. Be that as it may, watching GRAVITY from the very first scene reminded me of going to see 'The Great Wallendas' in Detroit at the State Fair just after that horrible accident they experienced with their impossibly complex High Wire Pyramid Act. There is that same feeling about GRAVITY watching this pair of astronauts do tasks in a highly dangerous environment where the margin for error is razor thin and you are crossing your fingers in your mind that nothing goes amiss.
But, of course, something does go amiss, otherwise where would be the story? At least that would be the traditional line of thinking. We watch and when things do go wrong, they go wrong on a scale of Biblical proportions, enough to make you recall DeMille's special effects in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Whether the orbital mechanics between the objects involved would truly permit such events would require a trained scientist to answer and so I will not venture there. But that it all looks and feels as real as you would imagine it to be I cannot deny.
Here the director scores his most telling triumphs. The authentic look and feel of the environment leaves nothing to be desired. The feats of Indian Jones narrow escapes that Bullock and Clooney pull off make you catch your breath as intended to do. The disasters in Outer Space have all the awe and fury of Acts of God and look and feel like the End of the World.
The film succeeds so admirably on a technical level you almost forget about things like human values. Who needs human interaction with crew members and character back story with these kinds of incredible things happening in the foreground? The strange feeling I got is that this film could have gone straight into the super technical direction or been about the drama of humans beings involved in mundane tasks servicing their spacecraft. The ride as it is proves still to be thrilling and satisfying, but just like The Great Wallendas this is a balancing act where something gets lost in the shuffle and not all the elements of the story make it to the other side safe and sound.