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Gravity

Emmanuel Lubezki won the 2014 Oscar for Cinematography for Birdman, but I haven't seen that film yet,  so let's look back at the 2013 film he won the Oscar for, Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity. Given how long ago the film came out, the following is liable to have spoilers. If you haven't seen the film yet, for shame! Buy it, watch it, enjoy it!

Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a mission specialist on a space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. A debris cloud, caused by the destruction of another satellite, shreds the shuttle and leaves Stone and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) stranded in orbit, desperately trying to find a way back down to Earth.

Gravity is a tour de force from start to finish. It opens with a long "single take" scene which begins with the shuttle slowly coming into view, then takes us on a tour of the astronauts working on the telescope. This scene culminates with the debris strike, the destruction of the shuttle, and Stone being thrown into space. There are no cuts. Through the magic of careful filming and visual effects, this unfolds as a single shot. It's brilliant.

The entire film is brilliant. I'm a fan. I watched it again to get the taste of Robocop '14 out of my brain, and it's as moving now as it was when I saw it (three times) at the theatre, each time in 3D because 3D was invented for this film.

I think I gasped at the moment where Stone is drifting off into the darkness. The 3D effect made the stars behind her feel so very far away. It's a gorgeous moment. There's also the end, when Stone stands up for the first time in the entire film. She's not in a film, she's standing right in front of you. It's breath-taking.

Cuarón and Lubezki earned their Oscars. Indeed, the film took the statute for everything it was nominated for except Best Picture and Best Actress (Bullock). And I'd argue it deserved those, too, only that argument has to wait until I've at least seen 12 Years a Slave; ditto Blue Jasmine for Cate Blanchett's win, which isn't likely as I'm not a great Woody Allen fan.

One of my all time favorite quotes regarding film is from Francois Truffaut, who said that a film should reflect either the joy or the agony of making a film. Gravity reflects both. There is an exuberance to how all the bits and pieces were pulled together, and a massive amount of agony that must have gone into making sure everything would come together.

Bullock spent days effectively sealed in a giant light box while cameras whirled around her. Those cameras were on special mounts, built onto the sorts of control arms typically used for robotic mass production. It's tempting to say all of this was improvised but it was actually the result of careful research and experimentation. The results were that Bullock could essentially be stationary while cameras and lights whirled independent of each other and her. The lights could even be tuned to project an image of Earth as seen from orbit, ensuring that the lighting would accurately reflect what an astronaut might see.

If all of this were just for show, it would be one thing. As much as I enjoyed Life of Pi, much of the camera work and visuals appeared to be there for little more than their own sake (except the tiger; the tiger was awesome). With Gravity, all of these technical issues, large and small, worked to put the audience, as much as possible while sitting comfortably in a theatre, into outer space, right into orbit with Stone and Kowalski, to make you feel exactly what they were going through. And it all worked.

Yes, the movie gets orbital mechanics all wrong. Yes, I sometimes wondered if spacesuits are really that durable. But the rest of the physics, how bodies act and behave in the absence of gravity…fantastic! This is a film that from start to near finish has to make you believe the main characters are in space, weightless, and it achieves that. There is, maybe, one tiny portion of one brief shot where it doesn't quite look real (Clooney's face inside a spacesuit), but that's it. For the rest of the film, the illusion is perfect.

And who knew that silence could sound so awesome! Sound doesn't travel in space because there's no air, but exceedingly few movies that are set in space adhere to this fact. Gravity is one of them, yet the sound and sound editing are amazing. You hear a power tool by the way it vibrates through an astronaut's glove. You hear the rustle of the fabric of the spacesuit. As air rushes in to fill an airlock, the sound rises as air pressure increases. Every little nuance is perfect.

Steven Price's Oscar winning music informs virtually every scene and is perfect for each and every moment. It was a wonder to hear a music score that was so in sync with its film. What other music of Price's that I've heard didn't prepare me for the splendor of this score. Little wonder that it was a given, from note one, that he'd take home the gold.

But that was true of every technical Oscar that Gravity was nominated for. Yes, that's pretty much all it was nominated for because even I'll admit that the writing can get a little shaky. But each and every technical craft employed in this film was used to perfection, pushing those crafts to new heights, to achieve a brilliant result. You have to look at films like Titanic or 2001 to find films that are as technically breathtaking.

None of which would have mattered if Sandra Bullock's performance wasn't great. Luckily, it is and she's the emotional core that the film revolves around. That she was able to bring so much to the film while being surrounded by whirling mechanical cameras and lights is nothing short of remarkable. Bear in mind, she did her acting while having nothing to physically to react to, no one to actually bounce lines off of beyond the director.

And while George Clooney is essentially being George Clooney, he's perfect. You immediately believe that he is, indeed, a veteran astronaut. He also conveys such a feeling of awe and love for just being in space. His final words are both beautiful and haunting.

In short, Gravity is a thrill-ride from start to finish and one of the best films you'll ever see.

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