Gravity

Diala Esreb

Gravity

Personal Rating: 8/10
imdb Rating: 8.1/10
Rotton Tomatoes Rating: 9.7/10

"You'll see a little girl, with brown hair, lots of knots. She didn't like to brush it. You tell her I found her red shoe. She was so worried about that red shoe. And it was under the bed the whole time."

- Doctor Ryan Stone, Gravity 

Gravity Critique

Gravity is a fictional space drama film about two astronauts who are hit by space debris, become lost in space and attempt to come back    to earth. The movie was directed, written and produced by Alfonso Cuarón. The main character is an astronaut named Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) who is a medical engineer and she was on her first space shuttle mission aboard the Space Shuttle Explorer. She is accompanied by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). During a spacewalk to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, Mission Control in Houston warns the team about a Russian missile strike on a nearby satellite, which has caused a chain reaction forming a cloud of space debris. The debris hits them and they are lost in space. They also lost all communication they had with Mission Control. They are fending for themselves on a scarce supply of oxygen and are trying to find their way back to any space station.

            This movie truly portrays the emptiness and loneliness of the vast universe. Even while filming, Sandra Bullock was by herself. She couldn’t see the cameras and the crewmembers. She was in a black box, suspended by wires, acting completely on her own. Her only connection to the real world was through an earpiece. This is a parallel to how her character is in the movie. In the movie she was completely alone floating through space and her only connection to humankind was  the connection to the Houston Space Center, which was lost for the majority of the movie. The fact that she was alone in real life was shown in her acting. You could tell through her body language and her facial expressions that there was no one around her and she felt lost. It was truly lonely. And as watching, the viewers start to feel alone with her. They start to feel the extreme silence that there is in space, and the complete emptiness that there is in such a large universe.

            The special effects that were used in making this movie was so stunning, for some parts of the movie, I forgot that it wasn’t actually filmed in space. Every little detail seems to be correct. Even the physics behind everything is pretty accurate. Editors spent 4 years bringing Gravity to life. Most of the shots in the movie are entirely CGI, apart from Sandra Bullock. The images are so crisp and lifelike, that even without the intriguing plotline, I would still pay to see the movie.

            The main theme in this movie is loneliness. And the idea that even though people surround you, you are inevitably, alone. The extreme loneliness that there is in space really helps enunciate the fact that humans are alone, and even if you surround yourself with people, they are also alone, even when they are with you.

            I really enjoyed the movie, and strongly recommend it for everyone. Whatever genre you are most interested in, this movie will appeal to you. The film looks and feels so real you have to remind yourself virtually everything on screen doesn't actually exist.