January 2014 - Gravity

Tadpole thinks:
(spoiler-free until I warn you)

What do you think when you think space movies? Gigantic spaceships, alien invasion, meeting extraterrestrial lives… I’m not usually a fan of sci-fi, but Gravity is different. Gravity is an experience. I wouldn’t say it’s the best film I’ve seen this year, but it’s certainly nothing like what I’ve seen before. It will keep you mesmerised for days and days.

I urge everyone to run to the nearest cinema and watch Gravity in the biggest screen available. It's an experience only possible in a dark room with a giant silver screen. Please don’t sue me if you throw up halfway through the film though. Nausea guranteed. (Simmy did really smell something funny in the theatre. Anyone threw up at the 5:45p.m. screening at Palace IFC on 18 January 2014?)

Telling you to catch a movie does not translate into me thinking it’s a perfectly amazing film. I have issues particularly with the plot, or lack thereof. But is plot an essential part of this whole Gravity experience? Maybe not, probably not. The visuals and sounds will keep your senses occupied that it isn’t until you've gone home would you discover the problems with Gravity.

When the lights are off, it’s easy to be drowned in the world created by Alfonso Cuarón. The visuals. The aurals. The alternating action and quietness. Wow, just wow. All of these are so overwhelming that I’ve missed the much talked-about shot in which the "camera" zoomed through Dr Ryan Stone’s visor. When we speak of experimental films, we usually have independent so-artsy-to-the-point-you-don’t-understand films in mind. Gravity has arthouse elements, but there are also plenty of big budget action sequences and CGI, lotssss of CGI. It still feels like an experimental film to me though, simply because it’s so different. It has re-written cinematic rules and marked a milestone in film history.

Yet at the end of the day, movies are movies, a story-telling device. If I want to see something that wows me, I can simply turn on the DVD player and watch The Blue Planet (we happen to have the boxset at home). Penned by Alfonso Cuarón and his son Jonás, the story of Gravity is pretty weak. Do they think a stronger and more layered story will shift the focal point from the special effects that they have worked so hard on? Well, at least there’s a story. I should recall my experience with The Tree of Life before I complain.

(SPOILERS ARE COMING!!)

My biggest problem with the screenplay: telling us everything*. I doubt my two years of English Literature have trained me into a thematic point/symbolism spotting machine. If the curtains are blue, I'll say they are blue and not that the author is sad or bullshit like that. Ryan’s daughter died. She had to let Matt go for he was weighing her down outside the International Space Station. We get it. We don’t need Clooney telling us how we should "learn to let go" AND even coming back to life to give us a lecture on moving on.

* Possible display of double standard here, but I think it’s OK for a silly movie to do symbolisms outrightly (actually, do silly movies still care about meanings / moral stories these days?). But for an Oscars contestant, it seems rather silly to have lines like “you have to learn to let go”. That foetus position shot is amazing though.

Now I would like to talk about: the toughest scene in Gravity according to Cuarón:

Throughout the movie, Sandra Bullock’s rather annoying groaning and wailing could be heard. Rest assured, I couldn’t help but giggled a little bit. Though this is funny in a way, her performance is very effective (remember she acted to nothing while being strapped into a box). For a certain scene, at first I thought she was over-acting. But how else are you gonna play a person who was expecting death? Bullock’s portrayal of Dr Ryan Stone in that scene is golden – the ultimate display of sorrow and hopelessness.

Then came the "rebirth" of Matt Kowalski. The dream sequence. I remember in secondary school, our teacher told us to stop writing fantasies and surreal incidents off as dreams. The dreamworld is not an excuse, or so they say. If it’s good enough for big budget Hollywood movies, why is it not good enough for F.1 Creative Writing… ? OK, enough sarcasm. That scene could have been worse… like Matt came back into the pod to give Ryan a kiss?

People seem to have problems with the part when Bullock told Clooney to say hello to her daughter. Have they ever lost someone important? I have. And I know how the day you last saw that person and the things you wanted to say to that certain someone, would replay in your head for four years, ten years or more. I think Bullock nailed that part. And her tears flew out of the screen and towards me in confirmation. LOL. Cheesy 3D.

I would love to see Gravity in IMAX 3D, but I missed it when it first came out. Only the airport cinema has IMAX 3D re-runs. Unfortunately, going to a cinema so far away to catch a film is too much of a luxury for me to enjoy.

Gravity 2. Mission: Bring Matt Kowalski back to Earth.

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Fish thinks:

*Spoiler Alert, couldn't help!*

Went into the movies merely holding on a single fact: Gravity’s nominated for the Oscars. Usually, the sci-fi genre isn’t the first that I’d pick from a bunch of on-screens. Romance, comedies or drama have always been my first choice. However, Gravity proved to be something more. Although I'm still Team Star Trek, it is a movie that is worth pondering, a captivating perspective as compared to its neighboring rivals.

The movie didn't seem long: it only occurred to me that the film was ending when Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) arrives the shore coughing and gasping with joy as she caresses the sand as if she’s encountered her lost lover. Then I exclaimed to Florence about the how quick time's passed. I would credit this to the film’s skillful and sophisticated camera shots and scenes, instilling a sense of timelessness into every frame.

While each shot is actually pretty long, I, as an audience, was not bored but, emotionally drawn into the drastic situation Stone and Astronaut Matt Kowalski (the amazing George Clooney) is facing in space.  The cinematography and graphics are so stunningly realistic and beautiful that I was all the way feeling intense for Stone, since she could have missed grasping on the holds on the spaceship and be dragged away with zero gravity to outer space. The 3D effect- stunning. The acrolith debris are very threatening and I held my breath every time they appear on screen. The view of Earth,is of course, breath taking.

“There, you can see the Ganges River. Isn’t it beautiful?”

After sacrificing himself for the survival of Stone, Kowalski speaks to her through the radio as he is drifting away, having his last grand tour around the planet. The audience and the characters then shared a sad yet astounded moment to take in the gorgeous scenery from Space above. I found this bit very magical- to have the capacity to appreciate the sheerest yet greatest beauty from a panoramic angle before death. This gem of wisdom is very hard to attain throughout life, and is perhaps, the most precious of them all.

The long and continuous shots give the audience a broad and clear picture of what was happening, and depicts a sense of urgency.  The scene where Stone discovers fire in the spaceship and then proceeds to escape was so pressing, and I had to praise Bullock for her outstanding act, pouring out a rainbow of internal struggles within one shot.

As the movie progresses, the audience gradually know more about the stories of Stone and Kowalski, both of whom have their astronaut helmets on and the facial expressions barely visible till much later. The voices of the actors and actresses are, I would say, a composition of their fine acting as well, because it is through the voices that we learn about their emotions, and this refreshing perspective draws us closer to the emotional journeys of the characters.

Also, the script is very well written. Because the faces of the characters are mostly hidden, I later realized how brilliant and informative the dialogues between Stone and Kowalski are as they “unpremeditatedly” revealed their personality, backgrounds and sentiments, without being pretentious and retaining a sense of casualness.

However, there are minor details that I didn't enjoy. The monotonous spaceship scenes take up quite a huge portion of the film, and I got a bit too much of it till the end. Moreover, Stone’s conversation with Aningaaq in the Chinese Spaceship is a little creepy, not to mention very odd as well especially when Stone starts to bark. Despite being aware that Stone has been frightened about her fate to a point where she is devastated and loses her mind, the whole thing added up together is nonetheless strange (but overall we find Bullock very charming and Flor and I had a major girl crush on her).

To add on, the continuous accidents and threats rippling throughout the whole film (the debris and the collision, the lack of oxygen, the letting go of Kowalski, the fire, the drainage of the battery, etc.) did keep the audience busy, but it wasn't entirely convincing as they were waived quite with ease and little effort, considering the time Stone used to solve the problems. 

Gravity, in a nutshell, depicts a series of struggles of the humans in Space, with Stone ultimately picking up the courage to fight for life till the end. This gives me epiphany- what is life without constant debates, conflicts and solutions? The simple message could be said as a cliché, but imagine you're Stone, the one who is on the spaceship. This gave me a brand new point of view towards life. The Space itself is an enormous paradox- an area that is incredibly perplexing to the current progress of human intelligence, so perilous yet beautiful, a place where every step could potentially be the path to death.  Should you be in this expansion of wonder, what would you do? What amount of time and courage would it cost to overcome the bewilderment towards the vast power of nature and let faith fill up every pore of your skin, to venture into the haunting unknown?

This is Stone’s choice.

“All right, the way I see it, there’s only two possible outcomes. Either I make it down there in one piece and I have one hell of a story to tell… or I burn up in the next ten minutes.
Either way, whichever way… no harm, no foul!
Because either way…. It’ll be a hell of a ride.”