Cornerhouse AV Technician Dave Petty reviews Gravity…
When I were a wee lad, I wanted to be a fighter pilot – not because I had a yearning to join the Royal Air Force, but because Top Gun was my favourite film EVER. Taping it off ITV every time it was on, buying the Widescreen VHS release (the only kid in my school to understand why widescreen was better), even visiting the RAF offices in Manchester to ask how to I might go about becoming a fighter pilot (it was for a school project – I wasn’t THAT nerdy, I swear). Despite its status these days as a prime example of camp 80s homoerotic bravado, it did what the US Navy wanted it to do: get kids signing up. Gravity on the other hand will probably kill off sign-ups for NASA for years to come – a meticulously crafted grown-up blockbuster that shows when things go wrong in space, your options are well and truly limited (unless you’ve got George Clooney on your team).
Plot-wise, things are kept simple: Clooney is Matt Kowalski, a seasoned pro on his last space mission who’s been teamed up with Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), a novice on her first. While installing new tech on the Hubble telescope almost 400 miles above the earth, a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite starts a chain reaction, destroying multiple satellites to form a cloud of orbiting debris, which is naturally headed their way at super high speed. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that things go badly wrong from here on in, with Stone separated from her tether spinning off into deep space, with no way of stopping her momentum. If this alone is giving you sweaty palms, hold tight: there’s 75 more minutes to go. The term ‘rollercoaster ride’ truly was invented for films like this.
Alfonso Cuarón has been on the ascendance for a number of years now, and Gravity represents not just his full-blown transition into Hollywood filmmaking (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Hollywood needs more filmmakers of Cuarón’s calibre), but his ability to push the technical limits of what can be achieved on screen – and in 3D, no less. The film opens with a 13-minute take, tracking around the cast as they orbit the earth, going in for close-ups, mid-shots and wide, satellite-swinging chaos. He even finds time to travel inside Bullock’s helmet, a technique he uses on multiple occasions, ramping up the claustrophobic tension to insane levels: it may be a cliché to say it, but Hitchcock would have been proud to know his penchant for a long take and tension-ratcheting set pieces has been inherited by the likes of Cuarón and his long-term cinematographer Emanuelle Lubezki, who helped to pioneer several long-take technologies on Cuarón’s previous film, Children of Men.
While I could nitpick about certain aspects of the film, I feel they’re more personal preferences on my part – Steven Price’s score is big, sweeping, intense; but this compensates for the fact that in space, you wouldn’t hear an explosion, so the music performs the job of foley in many key sequences. There’s also some opening exposition that really isn’t needed, along with a couple of moments of respite that, while needed, do tend to err on the side of cheesy. But this doesn’t prevent the film being a five-star experience. The sheer quality of what’s on screen means that no matter if you watch it on 3D or 2D, you’re sure to be blown away.
Gravity (2D) is now screening at Cornerhouse. Watch the trailer and book your tickets here.