More than brilliant visuals and sound

Rating: 10/10 (5 October 2013)

Most of the reviews I've read focus on the visuals and sound, and rightly so -- the unmatched technical achievement in this film results in the rare feeling of being part of the story. Read all the superlatives in the reviews and see this film -- see it on a big screen with big sound. The screen will fade away while the sound and the silence move you.
What I don't see in the reviews is the other side. All the stunning images and sounds would be empty without meaning. The solitude and awe provide the space for something more.
The spacecraft and space suits are small worlds to support life just as the earth is in the vastness of space. We leave the protection of earth to the protection of an orbiting shuttle only to go outside in the protection of a space suit - like a womb protecting us from the dangers outside. We leave the space suit into an airlock. We see Ryan floating silently in a fetal position and sense safety and hope. And when it fails -- and it will all fail -- our birth, our rebirth is what matters. In a moment of quiet resignation to death - a death borne of pain and calamity - she finds a way to pray, something she was never taught, simply by putting her hands together.
In her death comes the answer, the voice of God through an angelic dream -- redemption and rebirth. She returns in a baptism of water to new life and learns to walk again under the sunlight of hope, free of the tangling cords of her old life.