A royal celebration of the essentials we take for granted

Rating: 9/10 (16 October 2013)

This is not an adventure movie. Yes, there are some elements of thrill, and survival but they are, in my opinion, only there to convey a bigger story. And the bigger story reminds us of things we take for granted. Gravity, the title of the movie, is absent from the movie right up until the end, and we see how difficult this makes our lives. We don't need big aliens or psychopathic crew members to make our lives miserable in space. The space itself does that very elegantly. The idea that we can conquer the outer space is just too ignorant. The mere absence of gravity show how essential it is to our existence. In fact, there would be no life without it. The space is portrayed as a continuous threat, lacking any kind of comfort, and rightly so. Things that we do without thinking, like walking, standing, keeping our balance, finding our place in space, these become impossible tasks. The lack of oxygen does not help either, of course. When Bullock's character is first saved, she enters the station and reborn with oxygen, literally, as her body assumes fetus position with the cables imitating the umbilical cord. You see this and you say 'yes this is alfonso cuaron making good movies!' The whole movie is so brilliantly shot anyway. Another striking scene was right after she returns to the earth. The spacesuit which is indispensable for her survival in the space immediately becomes a problem once she is on earth. Very well filmed. She is born again, this time in the sea, and crawls back to the shore. She has to try hard to walk again, to readjust herself to earth. It is almost as difficult as the first step humankind had to walk as homo erectus. But she manages, because this is home, and here, there is everything we need to survive. Movie closes with her walking, doing the most mundane looking act, yet you may ask yourself, 'which is more important?Amstrong's first step on the moon, or our first step on earth?' Really, it took a lot of things to make both happen.