Gravity - Review and Discussion Thread

Here's an article on how physically demanding, i.e. difficult, it was for Sandra Bullock.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/06/sandra-bullock-pain-gravity-oscars-george-clooney-2014

 

Wonder just how frigging difficult for Helen Slater, a petite young woman who was all of 19 at the time of filming Supergirl, must have found it to be lowered with wires in scene after scene. The points you are making (alone) does not a good movie make.

 

Who said they did?

 

But everyone keeps talking about the SFX, the arduous training, all of that. TThe screenplay (the story) wasn't nominated at all at the Oscars. Even the director himself would probably acknowledge that the story itself isn't all that great. It's decent, to be sure, but the film is more about the experience itself.

 

And?

 

Nothing wrong with that, just as long as people admit it.

I just don't like it when decent films like this are overpraised. When it comes down to it, people always come back to the effects when talking about how great this film was. At the end of the day, that's all there is here.

 

Is there anything wrong with a film being a terrific feat of spectacle?

I wish the film had sharper characterization and Bullock had given a better performance in certain scenes...but that didn't stop the movie from being an exceptionally well-crafted thriller from beginning to end. That places it above and beyond merely being "decent" in my book.

 

Admit what? That I found it to be a remarkable film? So remarkable that I've posted quite a few remarks about it? I don't recall claiming it was a perfect film. Let me check—yes—I did not rank the film as an "A+".

 

I also wasn't talking about you specifically.

 

FSM is right! It's not a good film because it used wire work similar to what was used in a shitty superhero move made 30 years ago.

 

I thought you saw the special features and knew that it wasn't the same work.

 

Oh hell no.

To me, the music and sound design is the real star of the film.

 

Actually, what's here is a simple but well-designed character arc story -- nothing innovative but tightly conceived and very well-acted -- as the basis of an equally well-designed action screenplay with superbly timed and effective beats which the effects help to deliver. That's why it gets praised as a good movie. For what it is, it is basically an A+ performance. That doesn't mean it's a subtle exploration of the universals of the human condition or a moving commentary on the poignancy of love and loss in a language as solidly authentic as the bedrock of the Canadian shield. It doesn't need to be.

There are any number of movies which genuinely have only their effects going for them. You're reaching if you're trying to describe Gravity as one of them.

 

While not necessarily a treatment of the universals of the human condition, I think there's case that Gravity is intended on some level to be a metaphor for regaining the will to live after a personal tragedy.

Of course, the events of the accident and the story's plot points in space serve that metaphor pretty directly. However, there's a parallel between those events and Bullock's character's backstory and the arc of her life. In coping with the loss of her daughter, she went off to drive alone in the country and listen to the radio. And there she is alone in space in the Soyuz capsule listening to the radio. Her choice is to die there alone, or to come back to Earth, both literally and figuratively.

The rebirth metaphor discussed upthread works not just on the level of surviving the action, but also of her life arc in recovering from the loss of her daughter, and thereby generally as a metaphor of regaining the will to live after personal tragedy. This film isn't simply a special effects spectacle.

 

^ Agree completely.

 

I haven't seen it since the theater but...

Spoiler

Sandra is visited by the Clooney-Angel who gives her the will keep going, and when she lands on Earth she is baptized and cleansed of her 'original sin' in the water.

 

Though I could do without the religious allegory, to be sure, the story for the film was fine... solid but not all that substantive. Enough to give the character things to do rather than exist as a story unto itself. I wish people would recognize that, and realize that the big selling point, the SFX, the so-called "experience," isn't quite enough to be truly impressive.