gravity a movie review :A MUST SEE!

[Bob Watson]

some more thoughts

1. While the movie doesn't throw physics out the window like typical movie fare, don't go in expecting hard science fiction. The movie freely take liberties with physics and, especially, scale and distance for drama.
2. If you think you might see the movie some day, do not let anyone tell you what it is about or how it ends. It will reduce the experience of the movie.
3. While it is slow paced, it is high intensity. I cannot think of a movie that has ever kept the suspense running so long. Once the action started about 10 minutes into the movie, it kept me on the edge of my seat to the end.
4. There is a point in the movie where it seems to take a negative turn and I wanted to shout "no, you ruined it!" at the filmmakers. One person left the theater shaking his head. Wait and watch it play out. You will not be disappointed.

 

[boomerang]

The reviews here are worth a thousand trailers. Gotta see it now !

 

[storge]

I didn't think it was great, sorry. Don't read this post further if you haven't seen it yet and might like it, I'll spoil some of it, most likely. First, it looked like 2001, but everything was in near-Earth orbit. So what? you say? That's where we are here and now, you say? Au contraire. We're not even in low orbit anymore, the space shuttle was cancelled and there's no space program left to speak of. So I want to say that first of all the film doesn't go for any expanded horizons, but is set in a time of rapidly shrinking horizons.

Second, "the Russians" track space sats as well as the yanks, so how is it that a Russian missile sent to destroy a wayward spy sat unexpectedly destroyed at least: one US space shuttle; the ISS; the Chinese space station; all global communication sats? "Half of North America just lost their facebook" was surely a line aimed at the contemporary audience, not really bad, but sort of underlines that this was a bit of a disjointed narrative, just like facebook is a warped take on life. Why half? Why not all of the US? Are some people still using fiber-optic cables so facebook was only partially down? Was this supposed to "bring home" the tragedy of the situation to the viewing audience? It sort of failed, and wasn't very funny.

Third: I didn't buy the way the Hubble and shuttle got razzed by the sat debris. The Hubble turned into a wild spinning haystack of debris while the shuttle got its wing clipped and some random unspecified damage took place in the front and open cargo hold. The space arm with Sandra strapped BDSM-style to the end was realistic, I believed the spin, and Sandra lost in space seemed realistic.

Why did George retrieve the body of the astronaut with the hole in his helmet, then dump the body when they got back to the shuttle? Why didn't George at least think for a little while about a way to get into the ISS when he was hanging from Sandra's shoelace, instead of instantly committing suicide for a dramatic higher cause? WE're supposed to believe his astronaut expertise instantly assessed the situation correctly, despite the evidence of our own eyes that they both could have shimmied back to the station OK. Why did Sandra then enter the Soyuz (?) capsule/module, when George said it was ruined and couldn't be used for re-entry? Assuming Sandra really could use an air-bottle to propel herself from the dead-in-space Soyuz all the way to the Chinese station, where were the Chinese guys she allegedly heard on the space radio? Did they parachute out? Was it all an hallucination? There's a wrench in the ISS hanging in the air next to the electrical fire: what happened to the astronauts there? Someone tried to fix something, but no one's home now. Comm with Houston and Houston-on-the-darkside is still down, everywhere.

Finally, in the Chinese station: random button-pushing leads to Sandra getting the escape pod to disconnect from the re-entering station, and somehow the parachute opens without any further random button-pushing. How does that work? Is there an altimeter embedded in the hull? It didn't get torched during free-fall re-entry? When the capsule hits the water (lucky break there, eh?) and she opens the capsule and it instantly floods, how does she get out of her spacesuit? Surely this was the point where Sandra should have shown off her bod, if it's really so hot, and not held in form by some sort of seamless aerobics tunic.

Does she really represent a strong female here? All she did was to survive, randomly, by a series of lucky breaks. She wanted to die in space, she was going on about her dead daughter and her meaningless life, but staring death in the face she ... pushes some buttons and gets lucky. What will, what determination!

If anyone can explain what I missed, I'd be happy to learn of it. It seems to me it was in no way Kubrick-esque, although it wanted to be, because of the total lack of continuity, whereas Kubrick was the master of continuity and back- and side-story. "I survived STS 70 and all I got was this lousy wet t-shirt." The end. No more space shuttles. No more space program. "I hate space." Great message there guys.

 

[Burnt State]

Does she really represent a strong female here? All she did was to survive, randomly, by a series of lucky breaks. She wanted to die in space, she was going on about her dead daughter and her meaningless life, but staring death in the face she ... pushes some buttons and gets lucky. What will, what determination!

If anyone can explain what I missed, I'd be happy to learn of it. It seems to me it was in no way Kubrick-esque, although it wanted to be, because of the total lack of continuity, whereas Kubrick was the master of continuity and back- and side-story. "I survived STS 70 and all I got was this lousy wet t-shirt." The end. No more space shuttles. No more space program. "I hate space." Great message there guys.

I think the pieces you are missing here do concern our resilience in space and new frontiers of human experience and leadership - that has nothing to do with luck or short-sighted sacrifice. Certainly in moments of climax our protagonist returns to both her brief previous training and blind faith in that new indifferent god of ours, technology - well that and the ghost of memory to guide her. These script pieces are purposeful suspensions of disbelief for the sake of emotional intensity - a standard filmmaker's ploy.

It wanted to be cerebral enough to acknowledge Kubrick and Clarke's themes of human rebirth and human evolution but Gravity does not aspire to the same esoteric claims of hyperterrestrial evolution. Instead, it is much more pragmatic about space travel: "we will survive and in our first fledgling steps into space over the initial decades there will be losses and blood. But this should not stop us."

Also, in comparison to 2001, whose biggest action sequence is an ape like creature pounding the crap out of another ape like creature with a bone, Gravity is an edge of the seat nail biter that is a great roller coaster ride of space seeding adrenalin. 2001, while I love it dearly, can be hard to stay awake all the way through if the waltzes don't knock you out cold in the first half hour.

 

[Tyger]

Also, in comparison to 2001, whose biggest action sequence is an ape like creature pounding the crap out of another ape like creature with a bone, Gravity is an edge of the seat nail biter that is a great roller coaster ride of space seeding adrenalin. 2001, while I love it dearly, can be hard to stay awake all the way through if the waltzes don't knock you out cold in the first half hour.

Love it!

 

[storge]

... Instead, it is much more pragmatic about space travel: "we will survive and in our first fledgling steps into space over the initial decades there will be losses and blood. But this should not stop us."

I wish that it were about that, but taking stock of what happened in the film, those crazy cowboy russkies went rogue once again and plausibly by mistake wholly destroyed the space programs of the US, China and ESA, and the ISS, in a few minutes, and stopped all global sat-comm. These aren't "losses" so much as wanton destruction. Then there's the real-life context, current events: the US has no manned space program.

I do see that Gravity is an interesting and watchable movie about survival, but it's not about more than that. The take-away message is very negative concerning human progress in space, and serves to "lower" public "expectations" more than anything else. The cgi is very good and it is interesting, but it doesn't transcend I Know What You Did Last Summer or any of a number of slasher movies where one person survives, at least for me there is no transcendant message. Not that films have to have one, but if you overlook the cgi, all that's left is a very short and somewhat stupid story of survival through blind luck, and even that short and stupid story lacks continuity and context.

Of course there were losses in Apollo and the Soviet space program, and it didn't stop us. Why then have we stopped altogether in 2013? "I hate space."

 

[Burnt State]

I wish that it were about that, but taking stock of what happened in the film, those crazy cowboy russkies went rogue once again and plausibly by mistake wholly destroyed the space programs of the US, China and ESA, and the ISS, in a few minutes, and stopped all global sat-comm. These aren't "losses" so much as wanton destruction. Then there's the real-life context, current events: the US has no manned space program.
...
Of course there were losses in Apollo and the Soviet space program, and it didn't stop us. Why then have we stopped altogether in 2013? "I hate space."

Ok, now you're just being negative, though quite witty as well. But we must embrace the space, no?

While the movie does spin a plot that has its dystopic moments as well as contrived ones, I found more dialogue and meaning for myself in the images themselves, and their various combined sequences.

While our contemporary reality may not be inspiring, I felt the movie just used the idea of space programs as a backdrop to the extended narratives of humans in space. I suppose you could interpret this movie with either gravitas or anti-gravitas, depending on your overall idea about what our relation to space exactly is.

Do you think that in 2013 we remain grounded for good? Do you think that in the next 100 years we will see more or less human activity in space? IMHO we have the capacity to be there, and so we will now always be there, and continue to stretch the edges of human capacity through our desire and our ken. It's what we do.

We swim. We walk. We fly. We float. We fall down. We get back up again. We swim. We walk. We will fly and float again. etc. These were the evolution of human gestures that I saw repeating throughout the movie.

 

[Polterwurst]

Just watched the movie at last yesterday. Great visuals. And although I guess there was still quite a bit of artist's license, it was nice to see they were going for some realism, no sound in space and stuff.

I liked the "paranormal" moment. Made me wonder if the screenwriter / director shares my theory that at least some "visions" while falling asleep / waking up might be genuine "contact" with something else instead of "just" your own subconscious. Although I guess you could explain "ghost Clooney" as pure imagination, Sandra's (character's) reaction seems to imply that she doesn't really think so.

Oh and Ufology: I definitely think she's "space babe material".

 

[smcder]

Ok, now you're just being negative, though quite witty as well. But we must embrace the space, no?

While the movie does spin a plot that has its dystopic moments as well as contrived ones, I found more dialogue and meaning for myself in the images themselves, and their various combined sequences.

While our contemporary reality may not be inspiring, I felt the movie just used the idea of space programs as a backdrop to the extended narratives of humans in space. I suppose you could interpret this movie with either gravitas or anti-gravitas, depending on your overall idea about what our relation to space exactly is.

Do you think that in 2013 we remain grounded for good? Do you think that in the next 100 years we will see more or less human activity in space? IMHO we have the capacity to be there, and so we will now always be there, and continue to stretch the edges of human capacity through our desire and our ken. It's what we do.

We swim. We walk. We fly. We float. We fall down. We get back up again. We swim. We walk. We will fly and float again. etc. These were the evolution of human gestures that I saw repeating throughout the movie.

I haven't seen the film but I am in the "pro-gravitas" camp as I take it very seriously. Some try various dodges to get around the "law" but I never break it even when others aren't around and it would be convenient. I think we owe Newton a tremendous debt for inventing gravity (some say discovering) but we also need to credit rigorous enforcement. Still, I'm no conservative and look to the time when the next "paradigm" comes along . . . It's good in the meantime to remember that gravity is largely a social construct - lacking empirical evidence even for what at first appears to be self-evident.


"The British Medical Journal (Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials | BMJ published a meta-analysis of studies of parachutes and has been unable to site any evidence that parachutes save lives over the placebo group that did not have parachutes."

 

[Bob Watson]

the film won 7 Oscars. including best director. Best picture went to "12 years a slave." Rikki and I saw that movie and were moved greatly.