REVIEW - 'Gravity'

Back in 1895, the Lumiere Brothers' ‘Arrival of a train at La Ciotat' played in theatres to audiences who fled, incredulous at this strange new apparition, in fear that the train would suddenly come chuffing out from the screen, pre-empting the sensations that 118 years later would still be breaking ground in the world of cinema. Indeed, it does seem mildly baffling that over a century on, ‘ground-breaking’ aesthetic advances in the cinematic medium are still being used as the primary hook-and-bait for ensnaring a mass audience.

Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’, some 2-and-a-half years in the making, has been heralded as the game-changer in modern science-fiction cinema, the maturing moment in the predominantly gimmicky lifecycle of 3D movies. Undeniably, the technology involved is remarkable and raises the bar for all space-based films to come. And yet despite this, ‘Gravity’ still manages to be a very mediocre film.

Its problem is that it believes the sheer heft of its technological accomplishment alone justifies its existence, as if an audience should not be entitled or expected to desire more abstract components such as a decent narrative, believable dialogue or functional characters. The plot is almost totally mindless, seemingly extracted wholesale from any number of formulaic popcorn action movies; whilst the two characters, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are worthy of absolutely no serious emotional investiture on the part of the audience, they are the vacuous black holes in this filmic rendering of space.

A lot has been made of the lack of scientific realism, and I defer to those far more knowledgeable than myself to make that case. That said, there are setpieces in the finale that are so far-fetched that it did nothing but distort all the exceptional visual realism that had served as a perfectly impressive canvas. [SPOILER ALERT] By the time Bullock crash-lands on Earth, myself along with several others in the cinema were guffawing loudly at the utter absurdity of the unfolding action.

The philosophic claims that have been made, with its religious and spiritual overtones, I would have to debunk as misguided. Instead, ‘Gravity’ sinks into a morass of predictable Hollywood positivism, the triumphing of humanity over all adversity, the melioristic redemption of the individual struggling to overcome all the odds weighing against them.

In the end, I can only conclude that my disappointment arose from hoping for a very different kind of film from the one ‘Gravity’ turned out to be. The opening 13-minute shot is sublime and I wish the film could have progressed in this slower vein along more existential or introspective themes about the role and nature of humankind floating in outer space. I was hoping for a more sedate and reflective ‘2001’-style study on the experience of humans at the very pinnacle of technological achievement. Instead, ‘Gravity’ is simply ‘Speed’ in space; a theme park simulator film in which style is everything and any substance is left to simply drift further and further out of reach.