Science fiction, as a genre, has for a generation-plus been largely laboring in the long, cold shadows cast by 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Blade Runner. There have of course been other films that swung for the fences, mixing entertainment with grand metaphorical statement, but the most interesting of those efforts were often low-budget gems that seemed to stand in opposition to the narrative preferences and demands of the Hollywood studio system. The default big-budget position has, for many years, been to figure out a way to introduce aliens and/or other mass-scale disaster — to inject enough action mayhem to hedge bets on the science fiction elements.
Filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is a game-changer, both for the genre itself and Hollywood filmmaking on the whole. Starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as a pair of astronauts whose mission suffers a catastrophic disaster, the movie is a state-of-the-arts showcase for some amazing special effects work, but first and foremost just a minimalist stunner and a master class in cinematic tension — pulling viewers into the infinite and unforgiving realm of deep space in a manner never before captured on the big screen.
Clooney plays rakish veteran mission commander Matthew Kowalsky, while Bullock is specialist Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission. Their spacewalk, and Stone’s installation of a special software upgrade, are interrupted by a belt of debris from a destroyed Russian spy satellite, which obliterates the shuttle and sends them spiraling out into blackness, tethered to nothing but one another. With no radio contact to Earth, the pair try to come up with a patchwork plan to make their way to a safe harbor.
Co-written by Cuarón (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Children of Men) and his son Jonas, Gravity eschews any Earthbound set-up or backstory, throwing its audience directly into the vast expanse of outer space. The resultant story is lean and sinewy, but notable as much for what it’s not as for what it is. While Gravity‘s disaster sequences are as gripping as any you’ll see all year, the film is chiefly gratifying as an exploration of the intense feelings attached to such incidents. As with J.C. Chandor’s forthcoming All Is Lost, Gravity is shot through with concomitant awe and despair over ultimate human insignificance in the face of nature and the universe.
Making deft use of unnerving silences as well as a gripping score by Steven Price, Cuarón and his behind-the-scenes team (including cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, a frequent collaborator) craft the rare Hollywood movie that earns the distinction of its 3-D and IMAX presentations. In most films, there’s the occasional instinct to pull off one’s 3-D glasses, to see how images look around the edges, without augmentation; there’s never a moment that sort of thought passes through one’s mind during Gravity. This is an immersive masterwork. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 90 minutes)
