Review: âGravityâ has powerful pull thanks to Sandra Bullock, 3-D

Kenneth Turan reviews âGravity,â starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Video by Jason H. Neubert.
âGravityâ is out of this world. Words can do little to convey the visual astonishment this space opera creates. It is a film whose impact must be experienced in 3-D on a theatrical screen to be fully understood.
Though the strong work of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney â the only two actors who appear on camera â is essential to what the film accomplishes, the great lure of âGravityâ is the way director Alfonso CuarĂłn, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and visual effects supervisor Tim Webber have collaborated to make us feel weâre stranded in outer space ourselves, no questions asked.
From its very first image of the shuttle Explorer and some of its astronauts floating close to 400 miles high, with a mammoth planet Earth huge behind them, âGravityâ revels in its ability to create images that convey the beauty, enormity and terror that being so, so far out there implies.
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Not only does that first image knock us out, but CuarĂłn and company up the ante by spinning it out into a bravura sequence that lasts for 13 minutes without a cut. The director has done long scenes before â a seven-minute segment in âChildren of Menâ is especially memorable â but heâs never pulled one off with all the built-in barriers of working in a facsimile of outer space.
Those barriers were so steep that CuarĂłn, one of the most accomplished directors around (everything from âY Tu MamĂĄ TambiĂ©nâ to âHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabanâ) ended up spending nearly five years on the project.
Once the âGravityâ team realized that the only way to achieve the painstaking photorealism the project demanded was to seamlessly combine live action, computer animation and CGI, new systems had to be invented and new ways of using existing equipment explored. Even computer-controlled factory robots usually employed on automobile assembly lines were repurposed for cinematic uses.
The new technology also made possible what Lubezki calls âelastic shots,â which go seamlessly from an exterior wide view to a subjective point of view from inside a space helmet. When you add in the exceptional way 3-D technology is used to bring reality to an unreal situation, the result is a level of verisimilitude unprecedented for a story like this.
Because the filmâs pair of protagonists spend a big chunk of their time buried in space suits, with the limited facial visibility that implies, it was critical to have actors with the kind of instantly identifiable star personas that Bullock and Clooney enjoy to keep us involved in the personal dramatics of the story.
This is especially necessary because itâs also clear that âGravityâsâ âlost in space, eager for Earthâ scenario is on one level an unapologetic B picture exercise where whatever can go wrong most certainly will.
But while the core story of âGravityâ is pure genre down to the workmanlike nature of chunks of its dialogue, it makes the most of that situation by having a formidable narrative drive, a plot smartly worked out to the smallest, most persuasive detail, and an intense, immersive score and sound design by composer Steven Price.
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As a result, âGravityâ puts you completely on edge, starting with type on the screen that explains that way out there, âthere is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible.â
Having established its location as a bad place for something bad to happen, the filmâs screenwriters (CuarĂłn and his son JonĂĄs) spend time with two of the astronauts floating around the shuttle, Matt Kowalski (Clooney) and Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock).
As written and performed, Mission Commander Kowalski is for better or worse a cocky type as much as a character. Heâs the garrulous âthat reminds me of a storyâ space veteran who is introduced having fun maneuvering around space with a new toy, a portable jet pack.
âYouâre the genius,â he says to Mission Specialist Stone. âI drive the bus.â
If Kowalski couldnât be more at ease, brainy scientist Stone is the opposite. Sheâs the nervous greenhorn, trying to survive her first time in space and working hard doing the futuristic version of replacing a dead battery as Mission Control (a heard but unseen Ed Harris) kibitzes the situation.
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Suddenly, very suddenly, everything falls apart. An unexpected amount of debris is headed toward the shuttle faster than a speeding bullet, and before you can say âBuck Rogers in the 25th Century,â Stone is floating untethered in outer space, all communication cut off, alone, alone, alone. And that is only the beginning.
One of the things that makes âGravityâ stand out is that its visuals of interior space are as striking as what it shows us of outer space. One particular sequence, of Stone gliding with weightless ease through spaceship corridors, is remarkable for its seeming effortlessness. In fact, the amount of work necessary to achieve that effect â including the invention of a 12-wire pulley system attached to Bullock and controlled by some of the puppeteers who worked on the theatrical version of âWar Horseâ â almost defies description.
No one has more screen time in âGravityâ than Bullock, and no one makes better use of it. Her bleak working conditions in this effects-heavy film demanded physical dexterity and the ability to withstand long periods of isolation, but through it all her gift for connecting with an audience, so essential for this kind of film, never fails her.
Director James Cameron is one of the small number of people thanked at the end of âGravity,â and this couldnât be more appropriate. His groundbreaking âAvatarâ opened the book on the modern artistic use of 3-D, and this film is the next chapter â the most accomplished, persuasive use of that technology weâve seen from then until now.
âGravityâ
MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense perilous sequences, some disturbing images and brief strong language
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Playing: In general release
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