More Was Needed

Rating: 6/10 (22 December 2013)

A _techno—thriller about the terrors of the void without boundaries, 'Gravity' was directed, written, produced and edited by Cuarón, being an author movie, a small—scale outing showcasing Sandra B..
The story is focused, though the style seems a bit bland, despite the harshness of the events.
Clooney is frankly annoying.
These said, Cuarón made a suspenseful, enthralling movie, interesting if not entirely satisfying, about survival near Earth. It was hugely pleasing (I'm overstating, surely) to see Sandra B. leading a tout story about the choice to live, about choosing to live. The story is straight, impressive, clean, averagely intelligent. And not so much the facts shown, but the template, the syntax; it begins leisurely, but the mastery shows.
'Gravity' is, in fact, a thoughtful movie, more thoughtful than it might appear. Good movie, and it doesn't have a thesis, but a position, a standpoint. At times, when required, it's scary and intense.
Clooney remains a silhouette. We aren't shown a lot of him.
There is a certain experimental attempt, a quirk, but the result is unconvincing, somewhat undersized, charmless, unsatisfying. It might turn Sandra's appeal into blandness. (It might, but it doesn't, since Cuarón isn't enough of an author to really warp the footage.) Cuarón mentions Bresson, but more was needed to enter the contest. More dare, more thought also, a finer script perhaps, besides the simply intriguing quirk. In the unity of Bresson's movies, of each of his movies, the style is made possible by the script, by its inner thoughtfulness, it's a unity; in Cuarón's hands, the stylistic attempt has to fail, being severely misunderstood, as no thorough script is provided, but a premise for a roller-coaster.
I think Cuarón misunderstood Bresson's art—if he ever really thought about it.
Remember Clooney's 'Solaris'? A similar ambition, also given as a family movie, an average cartoon.
Bresson and Tarkovsky were both mistaken by the directors as making style, when they were deepening very good scripts (and, of course, bringing unequaled skills).
Some very brave directors, people like Welles, who came from Expressionism, once imposed the notion of style over content, and this understanding has lasted, it has stamped Hollywood until today; but Bresson and Tarkovsky come from a different, even opposed, aesthetics, where style doesn't trump content, but boosts it (Iosifescu called this, 'the quiet style', he meant literature), a trend who didn't cherish style as a sovereign entity, the triumph of the form (think of Antonioni, of the mature Truffaut, or the way style dissolves, is taken over by content, even in the best of the late Fellini).
So, it is not about style and lack of style, but about style of a subtler nature. A quieter style. And so, beginning with Cuarón, we reached a cornerstone of the cinema aesthetics.
Thank you for reading, if you did.