Telluride ’13: Gravity

Gravity

**½/****
starring Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón
directed by Alfonso Cuarón

by Walter Chaw Alfonso Cuarón's eagerly-anticipated,
already-buzzy follow-up to the tremendous Children of Men is Gravity–a title that doesn't reference the Ray
Bradbury story "Kaleidoscope," to which the film owes at least a little
credit (in addition to the premise and theme, Gravity also lifts the character name "Stone"), or any real meat at the heart of the story.
It's not for lack of trying, as Cuarón and son/co-writer Jonás attempt,
after the emotional tissue connecting the protags of Children of Men,
to graft another lost-child drama onto a larger science-fiction conceit. What
results is probably the most venue-dependant release of a year that includes Pacific
Rim
–if you can see it in IMAX 3D, you ought to: the biggest screen with
the best sound. It's possibly the first film since Avatar that
actually works with the extra dimension, despite having been converted in
post-production; at times while screening Gravity at the Werner Herzog Theater
in Telluride, I felt a bit vertiginous. It's an effect that no doubt had
everything to do with the dual-projection and the custom-designed
sound system by Meyers Sound. I talked to several techs from the company
running around before the show,
tweaking, testing, making sure that organs physically shifted during
the presentation. My favourite story of the festival is how Cuarón, from the
auditorium, instructed the booth to turn up the audio to just less than twice
the "acceptable" volume.

It's a technophile's dream, in other words,
an absolute stunner populated by types and suggestions of
types. I should say "underpopulated." But much of that is by design–so
much so that a short written by Jonas called Aningaaq was crafted to
provide some contextual backstory for a key (and notably weak) section of the
film. A shame it didn't play with Gravity proper (not being in 3-D, you
see). Whatever the case, Gravity deals with the aftermath of a debris
storm, Russkie-caused, that destroys an American space shuttle and mission to
repair, again, the Hubble Telescope, thus shooting hotshot mission leader
Kowalski (George Clooney) and civilian specialist Stone (Sandra Bullock) into
the void. Their plan is to go to the International Space Station or, failing
that, the Chinese station Tiangong (which is due to be completed around 2015,
if you're creating a timeline for the movie in your mom's basement), secure an
evacuation capsule, and return to Earth. The problem is that someone's
running out of oxygen, someone else is running out of fuel, Stone's a total klutz,
and Kowalski…well, let's just say Kowalski is too competent for his own
good, and on his final mission, no less. Various contrivances conspire to shut our heroes off from "Houston" and any other human interaction, making
Gravity surprisngly beholden to modern spam-in-a-cabin flicks that need a
moment to explain why cell phones don't work while imperilling our attractive
heroes in a situation created through their own desire for adventure.

So it's not a very
good movie, but it is a really good spectacle. In the right place under
the right conditions, it's the model of Summer entertainment,
making it a shame that it's saddled with the greater expectations of Fall.
There's no other way to explain Stone's Phoebe Cates chimney
speech about her dead daughter (the one with the messy mop of hair), or the
hero-shot at the end to run with an awards-show reel that will likely only play
during the technical categories. Credit where credit is due, Gravity joins The
Wolverine
as key blockbusters this year with smart(ish,
in this instance), powerful women at the centre of what is traditionally a cowboy genre. There is a single shot in the film, though, that suggests
the full potential of what it could have, should have, been, given the
talent involved and the untold riches and technological invention in play. It
happens when one of the astronauts reaches a place of rest and, in Gravity's
CGI weightlessness, falls asleep while gently rotating along a horizontal
axis until coming to a stop in a perfect fetal position. It's heart-rending,
truly breathless image-making, and it recalls in a moment the modern
photographic installations of Children of Men. It reminds, in other
words, that this bit of Hollywood boom-crash opera was made by a filmmaker, Cuarón,
who's capable of even better.

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21 Comments

  1. MN

    Wow. What a cynic you are.

  2. MN

    Wow. What a cynic you are.

  3. MN

    Wow. What a cynic you are.

  4. emi

    really, big time cynic!

  5. emi

    really, big time cynic!

  6. emi

    really, big time cynic!

  7. Rich

    I don’t think the other commenters understand what cynicism is.

  8. Rich

    I don’t think the other commenters understand what cynicism is.

  9. Rich

    I don’t think the other commenters understand what cynicism is.

  10. RJH

    Interesting to read the comparisons to Avatar. The 3D was great, right? That’s how I remember it, but in its drop from ‘best movie evar’ to mostly forgotten, those I’ve spoken to have also forgotten how awesome that 3D was. It’s really too bad that we’ve been left mostly with mostly-crappy post-3D in its wake. Glad to hear that it can be serviceable put in the right hands.

  11. RJH

    Interesting to read the comparisons to Avatar. The 3D was great, right? That’s how I remember it, but in its drop from ‘best movie evar’ to mostly forgotten, those I’ve spoken to have also forgotten how awesome that 3D was. It’s really too bad that we’ve been left mostly with mostly-crappy post-3D in its wake. Glad to hear that it can be serviceable put in the right hands.

  12. RJH

    Interesting to read the comparisons to Avatar. The 3D was great, right? That’s how I remember it, but in its drop from ‘best movie evar’ to mostly forgotten, those I’ve spoken to have also forgotten how awesome that 3D was. It’s really too bad that we’ve been left mostly with mostly-crappy post-3D in its wake. Glad to hear that it can be serviceable put in the right hands.

  13. chet

    money is tight right now so damn this movie for demanding the IMAX 3D experience, a.k.a. 20 bucks. and that’s leaving the wife at home.
    if i wait to watch this on my 40-inch it probably won’t have a tenth the impact, right? again, dammit.

  14. chet

    money is tight right now so damn this movie for demanding the IMAX 3D experience, a.k.a. 20 bucks. and that’s leaving the wife at home.
    if i wait to watch this on my 40-inch it probably won’t have a tenth the impact, right? again, dammit.

  15. chet

    money is tight right now so damn this movie for demanding the IMAX 3D experience, a.k.a. 20 bucks. and that’s leaving the wife at home.
    if i wait to watch this on my 40-inch it probably won’t have a tenth the impact, right? again, dammit.

  16. Mike

    I love reading Walter’s reviews (especially when they’re bad), but for the life of me, I don’t get his film taste. Case in point, he gave Freddy vs. Jason a higher rating than American Beauty. Flash forward to the present, and Gravity gets a mild 2 1/2 out of 4. SMH.

  17. Mike

    I love reading Walter’s reviews (especially when they’re bad), but for the life of me, I don’t get his film taste. Case in point, he gave Freddy vs. Jason a higher rating than American Beauty. Flash forward to the present, and Gravity gets a mild 2 1/2 out of 4. SMH.

  18. Mike

    I love reading Walter’s reviews (especially when they’re bad), but for the life of me, I don’t get his film taste. Case in point, he gave Freddy vs. Jason a higher rating than American Beauty. Flash forward to the present, and Gravity gets a mild 2 1/2 out of 4. SMH.

  19. Mark Leonard

    Mike, you should admire the bravery of a film critic who gives “FvJ” a higher rating than standard establishment fodder, like “American Beauty”. Even when I don’t agree with Mr. Chaw, I contemplate that his reading on a particular film is most likely more intuitive than my own take. Not that he needs me to defend him, but that’s why I never miss his reviews. He’s one of the best in the business. ML

  20. Mark Leonard

    Mike, you should admire the bravery of a film critic who gives “FvJ” a higher rating than standard establishment fodder, like “American Beauty”. Even when I don’t agree with Mr. Chaw, I contemplate that his reading on a particular film is most likely more intuitive than my own take. Not that he needs me to defend him, but that’s why I never miss his reviews. He’s one of the best in the business. ML

  21. Mark Leonard

    Mike, you should admire the bravery of a film critic who gives “FvJ” a higher rating than standard establishment fodder, like “American Beauty”. Even when I don’t agree with Mr. Chaw, I contemplate that his reading on a particular film is most likely more intuitive than my own take. Not that he needs me to defend him, but that’s why I never miss his reviews. He’s one of the best in the business. ML

Comments are closed