Gravity (2013)

Once in a while there comes a movie that will simply blow your mind. But it wouldn’t shoot your brains out American Beauty style, it will be that good kind of blowing – pun intended and all. For me, and for so many of my fellow bloggers out there, Gravity is that movie of 2013 which simply took us, shook us, threw us around, comforted us and eventually just blew us away…. into space.

To express the immense power Gravity has, one doesn’t really have to look far, they can just describe the opening of the movie because that’s the moment where Gravity grabs you, right there in the beginning. A sentence “Space has no sound” appears with a powerful track playing on the background and in a moment of musical climax, Gravity appears and then pitch black silence! I know I’m not doing it justice by describing this, but chills, proper chills and the movie had run for no more than a half a minute – it was just that intense. And the great news is that the movie kept that intensity throughout, with few breaking points, well placed action sequences and a couple of calm moments in the midst of it all.

That’s what I remember the best, the calmness after and before the storm, literally a storm of satellite pieces orbiting in space, because those where the moments I was allowed to take all of it in. Because with all those action scenes I was just too busy looking at the screen to even form coherent thoughts. So those important scenes where the director Alfonso Cuarón allowed the plot to slow down a bit for the main character Ryan (Sandra Bullock), where also the few occasions where the audience was able to breath. What I’m trying to say is that Gravity was really smartly paced, not just for the characters but as well as the audience.

One of my favorite scenes from the movie was one of those calm after the storm moments, Ryan has finally reached the Russian space station and has stripped herself from the space suit. I’m not the only one who recognized the symbolism of rebirth in that scene because it was very obvious but it was still amazing. The concept of rebirth seems to be one of the main themes Cuarón portrays in Gravity, in addition to human strength and the power of survival instinct. Space is massive, it’s endless and scary but Gravity shows us that we are even more powerful because Ryan, a woman who has gone through so much, fights trough.

Sandra Bullock is at her best here! I almost can’t believe that this is the same woman I fell in love with while watching While You Were Sleeping because this is a whole new ballgame. She demands to be rooted for, she is that kind of an actress and I don’t know if I had liked the movie as much if somebody else would have been Ryan instead. I think Bullock was the best way to go and it scares me that she wasn’t the first choice – because she would have been mine. Though Bullock is on screen alone for the most part, for me George Clooney as Kowalski still managed to steal a bit of her spotlight. He was the hero that most Hollywood movies would push as the survivor because he was the strong and charismatic leading man who always comes out on top.. but not in Gravity.

Even now, days later I’m getting emotional just by thinking about Kowalski and his sacrifice, and I’m pretty sure Clooney is at fault here. Just as I love Bullock, I adore Clooney but Clooney is the one who has made me cry three times now! Twice during the movie and once while writing this review – damn you, Clooney and your precious face! But getting back to all seriousness, that limited time Bullock and Clooney could share the screen created a really strong and an emotional connection between Ryan and Kowalski most romantic comedies couldn’t create in 2 hours. They just fit and with a movie that has such a simple plot idea, the complexity it creates with just three characters is astonishing.

Now you’re thinking, who’s the third character in Gravity, well, it’s the scariest character of all – the space. Knowing that this character was created with CGI makes me a bit scared of the fact how far technology has come. I just recently read that the last sci-fi movie made without ANY CGI was Blade Runner and that was 31 years ago! Obviously the realism in Blade Runner and Gravity can’t be compared but honestly, Gravity is probably the most real any sci-fi has ever felt. Never I thought, that’s artificially made because the movie had so many little details that kind of added that extra something for making it more real. Eventually, the space was almost as real as the emotions Bullock was portraying and that’s pretty darn scary.

With a movie so intense and compact with meaning, it’s difficult to go into details by having it seen just once – I’m guessing this one is going to get a lot of repeat viewings after it hits the DVD rack. People will remember its visuals, they will relive the emotions, they will keep praising it years later and compare all the future space movies to that 2013 Gravity that just blew us away. I read somewhere that this is our generations “IT” movie and I must agree to a certain extent because I’m hoping there will be many more cinematic wonders in the future. But one thing is certain, Cuarón has set the bar high – really high because he took it to space, literally.