Hope of Gravity

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2016)

This movie, from the beginning, is actually quite despairing and gloomy. The setting of the space makes it more desolate and heavy. The situation that the main character, Dr. Stone, gets in right from the beginning of the movie is probably the most dreadful thing that can happen in space, or anywhere, in someone's life. She gets lost in the middle of nowhere, without anyone around, and without anything to rely on except for herself and the voice of her colleague, Matt Kowalski, who is an astronaut, also being drifted away in space.
The past of Dr. Stone and this present situation of her being lost somehow reflects on each other. After her daughter died, she would drive every evening, in silence, heading nowhere, just like she is in space in this situation. She says that the thing she like about the space is the silence of it in the beginning of the movie. Back on Earth, she was also completely alone after her daughter died, cut off from the world. She was lost. But then in space, as she is drifting nowhere, not knowing how she can survive, since she is a doctor, not an astronaut, she hears the voice of Matt Kowalski. He talks to her to keep her alive, and tells her what she can do to survive. And this eventually lets her find a way to survive. Even in her dream, he comes to her and talks to her.
I think this is what she really needed to survive. She had lost hope- she had no purpose of living. But the voice that stayed with her raised her up. Someone was there for her to keep living. This gives her the volition to live, then that was all she thought about, to survive, and to live- to go back to Earth. When she successfully lands on Earth, she (and the audience) is relieved of the presence of gravity, of life. I think that this concise, strong story successfully delivers the message about how we all actually want to live, and how just one person's aid can lift someone up again, without any distracting elements. Some people might think that it's boring at parts, unrealistic maybe, and extremely heavy, but this movie stayed in my mind for a long time, and reminds me at times of the hope of life- of gravity.