Y Tu Dios Tambien

Gravity-mod

Film is a visual medium.

This sounds like more or less the most obvious statement ever, and yet, embarrassingly, I have to consistently remind myself of it when I watch movies. As a fiction writer, I usually pay much closer attention to the characters, the dialogue, the narrative. The problem for me with visual style is that the kind of visual style I like best is invisible. Just as the secret to wearing makeup is to make it look like you aren’t wearing any, I find that when visual tricks are done right, I don’t notice them at all, because they work in service of the story. I’m not very interested in a visual style that calls attention to itself, rather than the world it’s attempting to create.

And yet Gravity is so very visually stunning that even someone like me can forgive its absolutely abysmal script. Full disclosure: this is the first 3D film I’ve ever seen. Are they all like this? Because, I mean Jesus. But reviews seem to suggest that, no, it isn’t simply my ignorance of the technology that’s blown my mind: Gravity is, indeed, the best-looking film of the year.

What’s best about Gravity is that my distinction at the beginning of this article isn’t even all that accurate: the visuals are very much in service of the story. Said story is pared down to basically this: Dr. Ryan Stone (no seriously, her name is Dr. Ryan Stone) and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (no really, Matt Kowalski) are fixing a satellite in space. Matt (played by George Clooney) is one of those jokers who keeps crackin’ wise about everything. Mission control (voiced by Ed Harris) plays country music for them as they banter. Matt makes quippy one-liners (“Half of North America just lost their Facebook!” he jokes when the satellite gets hit with debris) as Ryan (Sandra Bullock), who is straight-laced and is dedicated to science, obsessively tries to reprogram the satellite on her computer. Did I mention Matt is just a few months away from retirement? Zero points to you for guessing how the rest of their relationship plays out: disaster strikes, Matt helps her stay cool, she warms to him, he saves her (“I know I’m devastatingly good-looking, but you have to stop staring at me!” he quips once he grabs her as she falls—oh, Matt), and then they get into real trouble and…well. He’s a few months away from retirement, so, guess.

And yet, for all the film’s cheese (“Either way, it’s gonna be one hell of a ride!” Ryan shouts at the end, just before her final attempt at saving herself, as though writer-director Alfonso Cuaron bought a book called “Action Clichés” and attempted to break the world record for most ever jammed into an Oscar contender), it actually works much better as a B-movie. By abandoning any kind of pretensions to high art, it puts its entertainment front and center, and as entertainment, it’s better than pretty much any film I’ve seen since at least The Dark Knight. Set piece after set piece finds Ryan and Matt, sans gravity, narrowly escaping near-death situations. This is aided immeasurably by two things. One is the expertise with which the scenes are narratively executed. First debris hits the satellite and the astronauts have to avoid the pieces flying at them (“faster than a speeding bullet” someone actually says) so as not to get the glass on their helmets punctured (one stray astronaut does not avoid this, and huge bonus points to the film for letting us see what it looks like when you don’t wear a helmet in space). Then Ryan gets detached from the shuttle and spins around, unable to get her bearings. Then Matt has to find her once she stops. Then her oxygen starts to drop. Then Matt’s tank runs out of juice and he can’t direct them anymore. Then they have to grab on to the shuttle as they fly at it at full speed. Etc etc etc. The whole film is only 91 minutes and you can see why—there’s no let up between these scenes, no time for you to catch your breath, and that’s exactly as it should be, since our heroes are in the same situation. It’s a nail-biter in the best way.

The other thing that aides the set-pieces is how they look, and wow, does this film look great. It doesn’t even look like it was made; it looks like Cuaron hired NASA to launch George Clooney and Sandra Bullock into space and had them read their lines from up there. I’ve never wanted to become an astronaut (mostly because Gravity’s horror story is itself almost an exact depiction of what I imagine it to be like), and now I never feel as if I have to, because I really feel as though I’ve been to space. My friend and I walked out of the film and had trouble walking, could hardly talk, and when the server at the bar we went to afterward asked us for our drink order, we looked at her like we were stoned. You can’t ask much more of an entertainment than that.

The film isn’t content to settle for just B-movie, though (Alfonso Cuaron has made such high(er)-art flicks as Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien), and strives for something more, but fails. But at least it fails admirably. The “more” in question here has a lot to do with faith. Dr. Ryan Stone’s daughter died before this mission, and she’s been shut down ever since. She’s looking for God, the film suggests, frustrated with Him for making life so fragile. She asks someone else to pray for her toward the end of the film, because she doesn’t know how. Cuaron gives us close-ups of Orthodox and Buddhist symbols on the Russian and Chinese space crafts, respectively, and you recognize that Gravity’s title is actually a double-entendre. It shouldn’t be, though. Sandra Bullock’s getting praise for her performance, but truth told, I can’t see why. She’s a solid comic actress, but when she tries to do drama (as in here, and Crash, and don’t even get me started on that unwatchable Blind Side) she’s one-note, her voice monotonous, like a small child’s impression of what adults look like when they’re serious. And, of course, the characters themselves are so silly that to add that level of (no pun) weight to the film throws the (no pun) equilibrium off balance, and the (okay fine, pun) center of gravity shifts so that you can’t really just chomp down on popcorn and immerse yourself in the film’s energy anymore.

Don’t let the religious stuff throw you. Gravity is a phenomenal entertainment, and it’s as weightless as space itself. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing, and I never thought I’d be saying that.

Ted McLoof

About Ted McLoof

Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.

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