The buzz out of Venice was sensational, and I finally caught up with Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity at this afternoon's screening in Toronto (alas, minus the presence of Cuaron or stars Sandra Bullock
and George Clooney, who attended last night). And yes, the advance word is justified—Gravity takes its place with the other great landmarks of modern digital 3D cinema, Avatar, Hugo and Life of Pi.
Cuaron's film recaptures some of the awed excitement '60s and '70s audiences felt on their first viewings of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. The entire film takes place in the dazzling and terrifying vastness of outer space, with only two characters (if you don't count one ill-fated fellow far in the background who has perhaps two lines). Cuaron tops the virtuosic single take of an attack on a vehicle and its occupants in his Children of Men with an amazing opening 13-minute sequence which begins at a very far distance and gradually closes in on astronauts Bullock and Clooney at work outside their spacecraft. Then, in the very same take, they're ordered to abort their repair mission and get inside their ship, only to be quickly overtaken by fast-moving, hurtling
debris from a destroyed Russian satellite. Again, within the same shot, the astronauts and their ship are hit and
Bullock becomes untethered from the craft.
Like Robert Redford's upcoming solo seafaring drama All Is Lost, Gravity is a stripped-down tale of survival—stripped-down in the narrative sense, but incredibly visually rich and nail-bitingly suspenseful. Bullock, always one of our most relatable actresses, is the audience surrogate we root for, in arguably her most demanding and emotionally open screen performance ever. Cuaron and his CGI team have created screen spectacle with a searing human dimension, and bring a true sense of wonder to this groundbreaking movie experience.
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