Gravity and the Journey to Birth

by Christopher Barr

Gravity was a film about resilience.  It was a film about living without all the hope and dreams that often fuel what we think it means to be alive.  This film sheds all the baggage and in some cases the language that we all feel defines and comforts our version of reality.

In spite of its technological complexity within the film, the film took the Ockham’s razor approach of a simple way is the best way.  Point A to point B to Point C, it also took that ‘it isn’t all about me approach’.  It was atavistic in its woman vs. nature point of view.  And what a point of view it was.

The Ryan Reynolds film Buried took a naturalistic approach that was mature and controlled.  Like Gravity, that film didn’t let the audience off the hook with flashbacks.  These films both kept you in the environment they started from and forced their respective audiences to stay there with them. 

Gravity was mesmerizing with its background Earth shots and its technology.  The footage of the ships and the ISS, International Space Station and the 360 camera angles put you as an audience member into that world like no other.  The only other film that comes to mind for me was Clint Eastwood’s Space Cowboys where the geriatric crew of that space shuttle had to stop a huge Russian satellite from reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.   I would also add Ron Howard’s best film to date, Apollo 13 for its realistic approach while in space.

Gravity went beyond any film on space travel when regarding realism.  What is it like to be alone, with your thoughts, with your memories, with your fears?  This film explored those philosophical questions throughout, where you have to take ownership of your actions, taking responsibility for your existence without a fanatical miracle story to follow.

Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours was a film about a young man that is caught between a rock and a hard place and can’t escape.  His right arm is wedged when a boulder catches the lead character in a cavern.  He eventually severs his arm and frees himself.  This like Gravity was a film about perseverance and will.

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi was a film about a young man stranded in the middle of the ocean after a huge ship he was on sunk, killing everyone aboard including his family.  This film was also about perseverance and will power, man vs. nature.

My favorite thing about Gravity was the silence, it was Zen like.  She was alone and it was up to her, in spite of seemingly incalculable odds, to use her brain and figure out a way to solve a problem and this was all after she accepted death, looking it right in the face.  That story never gets old because every human being on this planet can relate to it.  Most of us live our whole lives without ever really seeing what we are capable of in the face of death.  Or for that matter, achieving something we start out believing is beyond our reach. 

 

Most of us point in fact are underachievers, myself included.  There are reasons for this, whether it’s a childhood lesson that you will amount to nothing, no matter how hard you try or for some reason you think you want something but in actuality you don’t.  I think a lot of it comes down to laziness and procrastination, ‘I’ll deal with it tomorrow’.  Tomorrow is that fantasy land where everything desired gets done and today is an infected land filled with weight and reality.  

In Sandra Bullock’s case in the film, she was using space as a way of escape.  A woman fixated on her detailed work away from the world, is able to forget about the biggest tragedy of her life, the loss of her daughter, who died in an accident.  As horrible a loss that is, that doesn’t end Bullock’s life, her life forges on.  What we do with a life drenched in tragedy is deal with it and not hide from it.  We dig deep within ourselves and live again and that’s what the heart of this film is about. 

A rebirth.