Gravity (2013)
Certified: 12A
Duration: 90 minutes
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris (voice), Orto Ignatiussen (voice), Paul Sharma (voice), Amy Warren (voice), Basher Savage (voice)
KRS release

Sandra Bullock plays novice astronaut Ryan Stone who is on a mission to carry out maintenance and repair works on the Hubble telescope. She has only six months’ training to her name and has a lot going against her.

She still has to get used to lack of gravity on spacewalks and, furthermore, her commander, the experienced Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), is always talking into the microphone. This is Matt’s last mission and he is being extra careful.

At one point they receive the ‘abort mission’ command and they are hit by pieces of wreckage from a Russian satellite. Other pieces of equipment head their way, causing other troubles. All this leads to the destruction of the shuttle and the death of all the crew except for Stone and Kowalski.

Somehow Matt manages to reach Stone who is hopelessly lost in space. The two are left on their own with no contact with the home base.

Their only hope lies in reaching the International Space Station and maybe get to use its escape pod to return to earth. The problem is that she is out of air and he is out of fuel for his jet pack.

Labelled as the movie of the year, Gravity lives up to the hype. The film really milks the technology used for all it’s worth and shows what happens when such technology is left in the hands of a director who is a master at his art.

Alfonso Cuarón has excelled in film-making with the likes of children’s fantasy A Little Princess (1995), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) (one of the best Harry Potter films, and with his grim peek into the future in Children of Men (2006).

Every facial expression conveys emotions that add so much to the film beyond its technical achievements

The only other film that comes to mind that moves in the same way as Gravity is Apollo 13 (1995), with the difference being that Gravity is not tied to reality but is a drama that is intent on being as realistic as possible. The film involves the audience in an almost unprecedented manner as one is literally immersed into the environment of zero gravity with all the dangers of space coming so hauntingly alive.

The movement in space is fluid and not clunky, flexible yet realistic. Every facial expression conveys emotions that add so much to the film beyond its technical achievements. Cuarón manages to convey this feeling of space as an unknown, vast element that is so dwarfing in its proportion to us humans. This space is not for the faint-hearted – every slightly wrong move can mean death... or worse.

To all intents and purposes, the film manages to make everything look real. The way the scenes are shot, with the camera taking us straight into the view from the space helmet, the feeling of weightlessness and that of surging panic and doom, make Gravity even more of an experience.

Clooney is once again effortless in his performance while Bullock pulls many a trick and leaves the audience feeling for her. The film is so strong that at one point you will forget that this is a Hollywood star and not a real astronaut.