Gravity (2013)

There’s a scene in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity when the chronically unlucky Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) curls up in the foetal position and floats silently in the berth of her ship: a moment of weightless calm after a catastrophe. Cinema has long presented space as the site where things begin and end. That’s certainly the case here, as a NASA mission goes horrifyingly awry and its two survivors are thrown into a relentless fight against the clock. The embryonic imagery is hardly new either - Stanley Kubrick’s genre defining 2001: A Space Odyssey famously concludes with a hyper-evolved infant making its ambiguous return to Mother Earth. But the exciting thing about Gravity is that it is new. Cuarón’s space is a revolving labyrinth of wonder; a vacuum of sheer magnificence. 

I spent the first ten minutes trying to work out just what about this film is so fresh. Many of the scenes are familiar: slices of Earth shot alongside the astronauts’ helmets; the sun peeping at the fringe of visibility. Yet Cuarón uses special effects in a way that steers clear of gratuity. He avoids the trap of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which spread itself thinly over graphically constructed galaxies. Gravity keeps things simple. It is set in what is presumably the present - so it is not strictly science fiction - and narrows the focus to two actors. This alleviates the pressure created by large casts and convoluted plots: Cuarón’s Earth sings on the screen in a gorgeous mass of blues, greens and everything in between.

In a sense, it also sings off the screen. Here we have a justification for the use of 3D in cinema and it really needs to be seen in this format. The camera spins and twists as Stone and her colleague Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) tumble through the void, eating up every inch captured by the lens. This is what is really new about Gravity: its dimensions open up space in a way Kubrick could only dream of in 1968. When Stone and Kowalski’s ship is hit by flying debris, the audience is involved in the terrifying spectacle as shards of matter shoot towards them. When Stone later sheds a tear, it dangles precipitously on her cheek then floats towards us, seeming finally to drop on our glasses.

Gravity might come under fire for its plot. Stone and Kowalski are quite flat characters, demanding little from George Clooney and handing Bullock a fairly uncomplicated portrayal of loss. Yet it would be unfair to mistake simplicity for shallowness. That the characters are somewhat eaten up by their surroundings heightens the power of Cuarón’s unforgiving cosmos. Rather than sci-fi, this is a thriller set in space, and it is an utterly compelling, brilliantly conceived piece of filmmaking.