There’s no doubt that the visuals in this film are something we've never seen in cinema. Not only is the opening audacious with its 13-minute take, but as we drift with the characters outside the space craft, we feel like we are floating, too. We participate in the unfamiliar world of weightlessness and lack the sense of direction that gravity induces. And sudden juxtapositions of speeds startle us as our calm can be shattered by a piece of debris moving at the speed of a rifle bullet or a moving object can strike another far harder than it looked like it was moving. Gravity also does a tremendous job of keeping us unable to anticipate the effects of movement we would normally expect; characters readily bounce off of surfaces that they would be able to grab onto here on earth. This film is one of the most visually compelling I've seen.
And with such tremendous technical achievement, it’s incredible that the story and characters are so insipid. The contrived plot has Ryan moving from one conveniently close spacecraft to another, and the big character reveal is that Ryan is mourning her lost daughter. Given such a cliché about the female lead of the film, it’s hard not to think of the Hallmark Channel, and the heavy-handedness of a scene like the one with Ryan stripping down and going into a fetal position as she is reborn into her post-mourning state would do little to dissuade you of your error. After Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men and now Gravity, we begin to see a distinctly maternal theme in Cuarón’s filmography. Would that he could pair his visual work with a script by a screenwriter of greater depth.This is a film to be seen in 3D Imax with whatever other projection enhancements are available because Gravity is a movie whose value lies only in its visuals. But these visuals are truly not to be missed.
