Thoughts on Gravity

So well after almost of year of this movie's release I thought I'd pick it up, and give it a quick watch. What did I think about it? Read my thoughts below after the break!

Thoughts will be spoiler-free!

So to begin with the film's "direction" because it is obviously the main focus of the entire thing to begin with. "Direction" in this special case refers to camera angles, special effects, sound, and the general art of having that all put together through the director's visions, and guidance.

It is downright spectacular. And that's coming from someone who was watching the movie on a measly computer screen instead of full IMAX 3D.

The greatest triumph of the film's vision is capturing the tone of space. Whether that is portraying the danger of space, or the general eerie silence/nothingness of space. Debris is flung around at bullet-fast speeds, and characters are constantly in danger of losing their handholds, and just floating off into nothingness. It captures very well the fear of helplessness of floating in Zero-G space that I am sure the director intended for us to feel in the film. 

It is only enhanced further by the amazing visuals which from what I could see were super detailed down to the last shred of debris which I am very regretful that I did not experience on the big screen.

There's not much else I can say about the vision of the movie without repeating myself, so let's move on to the characters, and the story. They surprisingly worked very well. This I believe is because the director knew exactly what type of movie he was making, and what sort of story telling he would have to do to make the film work best (I will elaborate below)

The film opts for a very VERY simplified story; stripping everything down to the bare essentials of human beings trying to stay alive in an isolated scenario. The plot is mainly driven forward by the characters trying to get to their salvation with things not going quite as planned along the way. The reason I said earlier that "the story only works because the director knows what kind of movie he's making" is because the movie is only 90 minutes long. With a such a simple story, and not much further to carry it, pushing for a longer runtime would make the movie outstay its welcome VERY quickly. SO I applaud this decision. 

If I have to criticize something in the story it's that with so much going wrong for the characters it can seem a bit like that things go wrong way too often to the point that it was starting to get on my nerves a little. Thankfully the movie ended, and wrapped itself up before such annoyances were able to grow beyond anything minor.

So in general, I'd say that I'd recommend this movie, but implore you to not view it as a typical movie with a narrative, but to view it as a very unique experience.