An existential brooding with an ache for home and appreciation for life.

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2013)

Gravity is a visual masterpiece. Oh well! You might have heard this compliment for this movie so many times that you would be giving a big yawn at this very moment. But then you have to understand that not mentioning the visual marvel that the movie is would be a gross injustice to the painstaking works of four and a half years the movie took to be made. Gravity is a story of two astronauts tethered to each other, adrift in the vastness of space. Now to begin it, it may seem that there is not much of a story to build upon or much of a character to create. And given its adherence to reality and science, you would think what would be there to interest you for the ninety minutes of its running time. Well, there are the great visuals. The opening shot contains some of the finest view of earth from the space. The imagery it creates of the space is beautiful as well as haunting at the same time. The movements of the characters and objects in the gravity and zero gravity are captured beautifully and the way beautiful set pieces explode in the space is just breathtaking. But saying that the movie relies heavily on the visual gimmick would be a huge mistake. The story has a flow and way of building up tension by creating hurdles after hurdles in the way of survival of the astronauts. Being rooted so much to its documentary style survival drama, it surprised me how much tension it created from the nothingness of space. Visual. Flawless. Check. Tension. Exists. Glitches here and there. Will come to that later. Check. Now characters. There is only one character that matters. In fact, Alfonso Cuaron says that everything in the movie is a metaphor for that character, the character played by Sandra Bullock, Dr. Ryan Stone. Concerning the initial character arc, the first half seems to be bit disappointing. It establishes well, the coolness of the head and limitless courage needed to survive in the harshness of the space as well as the humour and banter needed to keep the aloofness or the isolation in the limitless space away. But what it seems to fail to establish is the character. The conversation seems to run into the mundane with the words like "learn to let it go". So many times I have heard that stuff that every time my "boring bell' goes off after I hear them. It instills into you the sad realisation that the director is trying desperately to infuse some humanist core to the story. And then coming to the second apparent drawback in the first half. The tension. As said earlier it exists, but it fails to garner my investment into it. The big set pieces exploding. The characters drifting. I am on my seat's edge. But my emotional investments are lacking. It is like hell with them. I would care less if they die. But it is in the second half the movie clears all your apprehensions, all your complains, all your doubts and it shines. Everything fits. The tension escalates. The stakes rise. You discover that the journey of the character's self discovery or transformation commandeered the mood of the movie. And once the transformation hits home, you sit there breathing and holding and breathing with the character on the edge of your seat rooting with all might that the gravity take her home. The first half compliments the second half in a way that will leave you all satisfied. It is not a great character work , but it is praiseworthy and admirable for its perfect juxtaposition of humanist drama with the space survival story of a soul in all its isolation. Gravity is a wonder child of Alfonso Cuaron and the only way you can justify his four and half years of his work is by viewing on the biggest screen with 3D glasses. Gravity is a science fiction with awe and wonder for the infinity of space captured impeccably on the celluloid , but at its heart, it is an existential brooding with an ache for home and appreciation for life.