GRAVITY - Experience freefall!

We have had films set in fantasy lands, faraway islands, dreamworlds, heaven, hell and beyond. We have had films set in planets that are millions of light years away from earth, we have had battleships in space. But, in spite of all that, we have never had a film that is set a few hundred kilometers directly above earth. Just man and space! Gravity is unique for just the fact that it explores this ‘space’ through which many of our movies have traversed, but never dared to dwell on in any great detail.

Gravity gives us a very palpable feeling of the fact that the serene, quite and

absolutely vast expanse called space is the most hostile environment for life. It’s a place where you can’t breath, you can’t talk, you can’t walk and neither can you fall. It is an infinity of nothingness. The only thing that you can love about space is the view that it offers, priceless. Captain Kowalsky (George Clooney) says so as he floats around the space station. You get the feeling that this zero gravity has had an effect on the guy’s brain. He never stops talking, mostly about girls and cars. Then you realize he’s a veteran of these sojourns who’s taking another walk in the park. But, Dr. Ryan (Sandra Bullock) is not so chilled out. Its her first time up there and needs Kowalsky’s prompting to notice the stunning view of earth. And then, things go wrong, horribly wrong. When something goes wrong in space, its not like on earth, where you fall down, get back up and walk. Up there, you don’t fall down on anything, you fall away into infinity. Nothing stops you, nothing holds you, nothing breaks your bones or your fall, you drift. You have pushed off your perch, your spacecraft has been damaged and you are falling away. Do you stand a chance?

The best thing about Gravity is that it doesn’t show, but makes you feel how helpless man is when he is left to his own devices in space. You spin, you rotate, you revolve, but you don’t stabilize. You feel the way your head might spin when left in space. A lot of the time, after the mishap that is, the camera gives you a viewpoint perspective as the castaways in space spin and turn at the mercy of zero gravity. The camera spins along and your head might spin along too. The action is slow, but riveting, as they try to regain their balance, try to latch on to something that will stabilize them. You feel the excitement because it is a matter of millimeters and there is no second chance. You miss it and you are lost in space forever. There are no enemies, no bullets, no strong winds, no water, nothing that can hurt you – it is the nothingness that can consume you. The team has done a wonderful job of getting that feeling into you. It’s a feeling that no other movie has been able to put into you.

The good things about Gravity are that it keeps the action in space real. There is

no artificial attempt to step up the pace to make things more exciting. The view and backdrop are unadulterated, the black expanse of space and the blue ball of earth. There is no background story, no build up to the space expedition, no big mission of saving the earth from aliens or asteroids. Its pure, astronauts stranded in space. It’s a relief that we don’t have to sit through flashing images of the people’s lives on earth. It is this unidirectional purpose of the film that sets it apart from all the outer space movies we have seen.

Are actors important in this kind of a movie? Well, to be fair, the movie is one big special effect. It belongs to the director and the team that brought the splendid visual backdrop alive all throughout the movie. But, there are moments where actors are needed and they prove their worth. In what is a very tense 90 minutes, George Clooney brings on his wit and charm with ease, it is like oxygen in the vacuum of space. You get the feeling that only Clooney could have done this. Sandra Bullock plays the anxious first timer quite well, handling all the action, the tumbling and turning. The actors are the reason you feel any emotional connection to this movie that is set entirely in space.

The 3D, well, one doesn’t really feel it in many places. The sound design, however, has been done extremely well. The challenge here is to mix sounds with silence, to remind us how silent space can be, and at the same time to stop any monotony from setting in. The balance has been struck perfectly. There are a couple of occasions when you feel that something has been sucked out of your ears; you

need to be watching the film in a good theater to experience these effects. Technically, Gravity is a piece of work that needs to be applauded for sheer perection in execution.

Gravity makes you experience what space might be like. It is the closest thing to space that you will see in a cinema hall. It is not a thrilling roller coaster ride, or adrenaline pumping time, but is an experience that is quite unique. The unadulterated portrayal of a space sojourn is the best thing about Gravity. I wouldn’t say ‘go and watch it’, I would, however, say ‘go and experience it’.