Those scenes where the debris shatters the stations and shuttle are anxiety educing thanks to the silence and constantly spiralling camera, plus there is some excellent build up towards them as the only hints we have are through perfectly timed radio communications with a panicked NASA guy warning them of this silent cluster of debris which just hurtles in and shatters everything in eerie silence with Bullock’s deep breathing being our only soundtrack. Her brief moment of safety when she’s on the Chinese space station feels so well earnt as it gives this tortured woman a single second of rest and peace, reverting to the foetal position showing that she’s come back to the safety of something vaguely homely. The film’s atmosphere is utterly oppressive with the loneliness that Ryan goes through for most of the movie as she moves through the wrecks of once great scientific achievements, reminding her that she is hopelessly out of her depth on a mission she never belonged on in the first place. There are some of these gorgeous shots of the Earth reflecting in the astronauts’ helmet visors during the opening, it’s a great bit of visual story-telling as it serves as a reminder for out characters they are reminded of the inspirations that brought them here, of all the motivations that have lead them there, it’s home and safety but its just out of reach and it’s trapped in these anecdotes that remind our protagonists of what they have to lose. The utter vast emptiness captured by the stunning CGI is both beautiful and frightening, the big blackness looks perfectly realised with all the dim stars and looming Earth hanging over the characters taunting them with the promise of safety and sanity.
To kick this off I need to talk about how this is one of the most gorgeous films of the last decade it manages to perfectly capture the wasteland that is outer space. You don’t need a Giger designed monster to put you on edge, just the idea that just outside the confines of our planet is a emptiness you can never tame. And this is the biggest strength of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, the idea of simply exploring the terrifying vast emptiness around our planet and just how frightening weightlessness and a lack of control truly is. Gravity is about the only example I can think of a purely Science-Fact film, there is a distinct lack of typical Sci-Fi elements and all we have is just space just the horror of the unknown that’s on our doorstep. But there is seldom any time given to films that are more focused on presenting Science-Fact where we get something heavily grounded in semi-realism, think Ad Astra (to certain extents) or Contagion. Science-Fiction in a cinematic sense is transfixed with stories of other worlds and new races, it’s a genre defined by the space voyage stories of Star Trek or the grimy lived-in futures of ALIEN and Firefly. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space.
The Shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone-tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness of space. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. Ryan Stone, a brilliant medical engineer on her first Shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky in command of his last flight before retiring.
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