The film is 90 minutes of breath suspension. Yet, astonishingly, your brain is still aware of the ethereal beauty around you. You are Sandra Bullock in this movie, like dust in a vast expanse of infinite and unfathomable space. And you might be dying. And maybe your last visual could be your home—a colossal vibrant blue-and-green orb of life, and you are detached from it, like a beautiful nightmare. For the longest time, you feel that you've got nothing to live for on Earth, but now, drifting in outer space, an existential shift transpires and all you want is to come home.
Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity has a simple plot: A quiet and aloof first-time-astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer on a space shuttle mission. Spacewalking around her, like it’s a walk in the park, is veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), the ship’s “bus driver” (here, quite amusingly, Clooney transcends what he calls “home” in 2009’s Up in the Air). A horrific disaster strikes, and the two drift into space.
The film, written by Cuaron and son Jonas, is sublime in its simplicity. The 3D effects are not there to impress—as the effects are seamless and so subtle that you forget you’re watching a 3D movie—but to bring you full outer-space immersion.
This movie inflicts terror and stress of mind-boggling proportions, but there’s visceral beauty in it as well. The stunning and transcendental cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki renders Gravity both intense and profoundly emotional, giving you an intimate perspective of a life-and-death situation with glorious visuals, that most of the time you’d feel like crying. It’s a lyrical weaving of despair and splendor; the strong sense of mortality in a setting of such grandeur is poetic and romantic.
Gravity achieves what cinema is always aiming for: transporting you into its realm. A masterpiece that does not exploit cinematic technology to rake in cash, but aspires to take you on an unforgettable and out-of-this-world journey.
4.5 out 5 stars
Opening across the Philippines on October 3 in IMAX 3D, Digital 3D, 2D, and regular theater.
4.5 out 5 stars
Opening across the Philippines on October 3 in IMAX 3D, Digital 3D, 2D, and regular theater.
Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
This review is cross-published in InterAksyon.com.
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