A space age version of the Life of Pi

Rating: 10/10 (27 September 2013)

In space, there is no sound. In space, there is no light; not in the way there is light on earth. In space where air is limited, you need to breathe in sips, not gulps; wine, not beer. In space, you need to keep calm. After watching space-survival drama Gravity, I was anything but. In the hours following the rolling of the credits, like Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) midway through the film, I had difficulty breathing - suffering from shortness of breath and light-headedness. Like her, I surrendered to a symbolic death through an imbecilic impromptu interview with a local news channel collecting intelligent quotes from departing theatre goers; again, I was anything but. And like Dr. Stone, I am reborn, with my faculties recollected and my thoughts sufficiently organised to share my thoughts on a film I exclaimed to be a ten from a scale of one to five.
Spoiler alert; I begin with the obvious – for me the best part about the film really began when Dr. Stone and I both realised that Ltn. Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) was not going to make it. When he cut the cord and drifted off into the endlessness of space, I appreciated - not for the first time – the relief of no longer having to endure his trademark smartass sass and smarmy smugness.
Yes. The man is painfully handsome and ages like it'll never go out of style but this film effectively demonstrates the best way to utilise his undeniable charms; with restraint - and sparingly at that. "Learn to let go," were some of his last words to Dr. Stone before his premature departure and imminent screen death. With the archaically unbearable but somehow still requisite 'stud gets the girl' ending common to his oeuvre thus effectively denied, all I have to say is "K. Thanks. Bye." And so with the distraction of Clooney blissfully out of the way, the story tightens its focus onto the lovely Sandra Bullock and boy, what a knockout she is. As the emotional centre of the film, Ms. Bullock deploys a masterfully controlled performance; her scenes pendulating between the two extremes of space related phobia - playing out extreme claustrophobia from within the confines of her fishbowl helmet – a crown I once thought will forevermore belong to Robert Downey Jr.'s many in- helmet close-ups in Iron Man - all through to the Kegel exercise inducing agoraphobia of open space.
With director Alfonso Cuarón's camera oftentimes stuffed into the limited airspace of her space suit, we are made to share the world from Dr. Stone's limited point of view . What with the panic of her uncontrolled spinning after being forcibly untethered from the spacecraft, her O2 levels running low, when warning beeps was the only sound we could hear, as well as the unparalleled horror of smashing into space freeze-dried colleagues and the terror of weightlessness by proxy, it's no wonder space tourism hasn't exactly caught on and I hope it never does.
All of that amounting to what could possibly be the best cinematic representation of Murphy's law in recent times, Gravity is also an exercise in frustration with the many times Dr. Stone just couldn't seem to catch a break. If Dr. Stone were Asian, she'd be well advised to take a nice long bath in air bunga to buang sial. From busted spacecraft after busted spacecraft to a recurring hailstorm of space debris followed by a near drowning after her re-entry onto Earth, Cuarón seems plenty determined to make the odds for her survival as insurmountable as possible.
In counterpoint to the visual chaos of each catastrophic sequence of events however is the film's eerie but scientifically accurate use of silence. Put together with the various digitally rendered vistas of Earth as seen from space, an apt background is built for the films unexpectedly spiritual exploration of death and rebirth. Cuarón delivers stunning scene after stunning scene - a near naked Sandra Bullock suspended in a foetal curl in zero gravity, a drawn and exhausted Dr. Stone finding peace in the resignation of her impending death, her literal resurrection from that death when she finally lets go of the guilt for her daughter's death, the kicking and struggling of her underwater emergence from the womb-like confines of the spacecraft descent module - the visual metaphors come aplenty.
Headlined by Hollywood heavyweights Clooney and Bullock and a kick-ass digital team, the film could have stopped at being a run of the mill space adventure romp and still bring in enviable ticket sales worldwide. Packaged together with Cuarón's solid story-telling, emphatic acting and its spiritual undertone however, Gravity ultimately sets an almost unfairly high benchmark I don't expect the Hollywood blockbuster space travel genre can reach anytime soon.