In Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity", George Clooney plays Mission Commander Matt Kowalski, a NASA veteran on his final mission. Similar to his Ryan Bingham in "Up in the Air", Kowalski has a certain figure in his mind that he wishes to achieve. Instead of flier miles, though, Kowalski is attempting to dethrone astronaut Anatoly by clocking more space walk hours. Everyone in the mission command loves him and it's not hard to see why. He is a man who lives to collect more fascinating life experiences. An optimist for whom every insurmountable hurdle is just another opportunity to be able to tell a great story later. So even when he is muttering something as ominous as, "I have a bad feeling about this mission.", you cannot help but be floored by his charm.
Further down the likability spectrum, we have our protagonist Dr. Ryan Stone. She is the kind of person kids in the neighborhood would describe as the lonely cat lady who likes to be left alone. Guys at A24 made a poster with the tag line "She needed her space", which is funny, but not untrue at all. She carries so much emotional baggage that it keeps pulling her down.
With these two out there in space, and a catastrophe that feels more real and urgent than it should, "Gravity" takes us on a visceral, dizzying and truly epic, one-of-a-kind journey.
The amazing thing about "Gravity" is how effortless Cuaron makes it look. Being able to hide sophistication in plain sight is the sign of a true craftsman. Form always follows function here and the range of mind-boggling techniques put to use to achieve a stellar vision never come at the expense of storytelling. Borrowing from what Kris Tapley had to say about the film, "Gravity" is deceptively simple. No matter how simple the story looks, thematically, the film is as complex as you want it to be. It's lush. It's about a mother learning to let go and find a reason to live again. It's about the sound of a barking dog or the cry of a baby that makes us realize how utterly lovely life is. "Gravity" is so beautiful I am getting a bit teary-eyed just writing about it.
"Gravity" did one thing right where I felt "Life of Pi" went terribly wrong. The only people who talk to themselves when they are alone are the scheming bhabhis on Indian Television soaps. It annoyed me to no end that a master visual storyteller like Ang Lee relied so heavily on dialogues. Every time Suraj Sharma's Pi said something, I tuned out. The older Pi (played by Irrfan Khan) is the primary narrator, but the younger Pi often took over the responsibility. Gravity doesn't have Stone narrate it. It thrives on silences as much as a mainstream movie can allow itself to (I hear Chandor's "All is Lost" has no dialogues at all.) Bullock carries the film on her shoulders and sells you those lonely moments in those long, unbroken shots like a true veteran. She says the right things and she says them right. On two occasions, the film uses a Nordic man named Aningaaq and Clooney himself to get around the issue of solitude and convey certain ideas vocally. Like someone joked on Twitter, Clooney is Richard Parker in that scene.
Sprinkled with metaphors of all weights and sizes, Gravity is a lot more than spectacular visuals. But more importantly, it gives us a hero who floods us deep admiration. In the film's final shots, Sandra Bullock became my favoritest actress. That says something about how powerful the Gravity experience is.