Gravity - A review and examination

Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity was quite an amazing film for a variety of reasons. First of all, one cannot do this film justice without fully giving the cinematography its due. The cinematography is not only stunningly beautiful and impeccably shot, it also made use of the potential of 3D film in ways I have not seen yet and am unlikely to see again in the future. For a 3D film, the motion and movement of actors and objects on screen is ballet like and hypnotizing. I think it would take multiple viewings to completely appreciate the movements onscreen in addition to the camera work – simply put it is incredibly well balanced and has no hint of the cheap-thrill gimmick factor of most 3D films.

In addition to this, most shots are incredibly composed regardless of whether the film is seen in the 3D or 2D format. For example, the scene with George Clooney’s character stating something about how beautiful the earth looks at that moment leads to the camera panning past his helmet from behind, the earth fills the frame and its beauty is accentuated by a silent moment of reflection, which leads to the shot making a full rotation back to Clooney’s character, this time from the front. This sequence was quite a powerful and elegant mix of technique and poetics, to say the least.

This mixture of “awe” factor with an inherent sense of poetry is what made this film so wonderfully immersive and deeply touching at the same time. It is as if viewing Gravity is like having an archetypal spiritual experience.  We could also compare it to taking a psychedelic drug, there’s no getting off the ride until the trip is over. In the same way, there’s no distance whatsoever from Sandra Bullock’s character, there’s no sense of the viewer being an “objective agent” watching the events unfold impartially. We I believe that the reason the film takes place in “real time” is so that we can completely project and template the main character’s experience on ourselves. I personally believe that film is potentially one of the most potent forms of transcendental art, that is, art that conveys that sense of spiritual depth, such as Bach’s fugues or Michelangelo’s paintings. Gravity’s strengths lie in its unabashed reverence and devotion to the universe as a frame of reference to this mind-bogglingly beautiful and frightening reality. The ever looming threat of death, that unbearable dissolution of the self into the unimaginable voidless void – this is the universal struggle that lies at the core of Gravity. Through facing death completely, one is reborn.