If there's one thing you can say for
Alfonso Cuaron's “Gravity,” it's that it is a stunningly filmed
depiction of life in orbit. You have to keep saying it over and
over, though, because there is very little else to say about it.
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a
physician-astronaut on her first mission, aided by Matt Kowalski
(George Clooney) and some other faceless players. She is responsible
for installing some new kind of sensor in orbit. What does it do?
We are never told. What is her relationship to the other astronauts?
Did they train together? How long have they been in orbit together?
We never know. We are first introduced to them all during a
spacewalk which is quickly disrupted by a speeding cloud of space
debris. Hundreds of chunks of space junk batter the astronauts and
shuttle, sending Dr. Stone spinning of into space in her suit.
Fortunately, Matt is flying a jet pack and is able to chase her down,
link up, and get them both back to the shuttle. When they find their
shuttle completely gutted and useless, they have to set off together,
jet-packing from one orbit to the next to get to a space station that
might contain a way back to earth.
It isn't that Gravity doesn't try to
be more than a great-looking, action set-piece. The story attempts
some character development with the revelation that Dr. Stone lost a
young daughter to an accident a few years before the mission. This
has apparently left her depressed, or reticent, or walled off or
maybe single-mindedly driven. It's never really clear. We just know
it had an EFFECT, and now it's part of what she has to work through
to survive. As she does this, “Gravity” dips it's toe into
Existentialism, but we are never allowed to care enough about the
characters to make the philosophy matter. As far as we know, only
human beings have Existentialist crises, and Dr. Stone is more a
cipher than a fully-fleshed human character. The same is true for
the action. There is lots of flying through space with earth in the
background, bashing into space stations and grappling madly for a
hand-hold, and it all looks awesome, but there never seems to be much
at stake. Neither astronaut seems to care much whether they make it
or not, and I never cared much either.
In spite of that, Alfonso Cuaron
probably did earn his Academy Award for Best Director. “Gravity”
is stunningly filmed, with fast-paced, zero-gravity action that would
keep you on the edge of your seat if it were happening to characters
in whom you had any investment. Sandra Bullock is as good as always,
but George Clooney seems to phone this one in. In any event, neither
is given very much to do.
For me, I suppose, “Gravity”
suffers from its own hype. Had I come into this film without
expectations, I might have been wowed. It is a pretty cool film if
you just view it as a 90 minute short. As a full-length feature,
however, “Gravity” lacks, well, gravitas.
3 stars out of 5
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