Gravity

Rating: 4.5/5

Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is on her very first mission in space. She is repairing part of the Hubble Space Telescope when her crew member Mike Kawalksi (George Clooney) hears a transmission from Mission Control that there is a storm of space debris heading their way. They are told to abort their mission, but are unable to get back into the shuttle in time.

The debris hits them with incredible force, and Stone and Kowalski find themselves floating through space as the only survivors of the shuttle mission. Panicked and in great danger, the two must find a way to make it back home to Earth.

As with most movies where there is practically one actor for the duration of the film, the pressure for that singular person to continually captivate the audience must be incredibly high. Sandra Bullock is definitely able to bring the necessary emotion and physicality to the role, and makes the viewer feel as if they are experiencing the harrowing ordeal right alongside her.

The story for Gravity is well done, but the movie really seems to be more about displaying the thought that went into making the space effects seem believable and intelligently put together. There are moments when Dr. Ryan Stone cries or gets a cut on her face and you see the tears or droplets of blood float away from her. Little details like that add to the overall anti-gravity emersion that the movie has on the audience. The runtime for Gravity is actually quite short, but had the movie been any longer, the impressive representation of space may have come off as old or repetitive if the film had been two hours or more.

Normally I am not one that tries to look for some hidden metaphor or meaning that a movie might be trying to show. In fact, it generally seems a bit pretentious when people try and look too deep into a movie in order to find a hidden message. With that being said, Gravity is one of the only movies where I felt that a metaphor was built into the plot rather than hidden within the main story. To me, I felt that Ryan's story was definitely supposed to be a representation of rebirth and starting over. There is a moment where she is floating inside a shuttle, stripped away of her space suit, and the effect, which I'm assuming was intentional, is meant to look as if she is in utero. From that point on she is literally beginning a new life for herself, until she can hopefully make it to Earth to take the first shaky steps of her new existence. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but if that concept was the filmmakers intention, it was very well done.

Gravity is an exhibition of how impressive the world of special effects has become. It is a film that visually stunning, but also contains a story of survival and redemption that is both intense and touching.