Gravity is a 2013 science fiction thriller film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also co-wrote, co-edited, and produced the film. It stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as American astronauts who attempt to return to Earth after the destruction of their Space Shuttle in orbit.
Cuarón wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás and attempted to develop the film at Universal Pictures. Later, the distribution rights were acquired by Warner Bros. Pictures. David Heyman, who previously worked with Cuarón on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), produced the film with him. Gravity was produced entirely in the United Kingdom, where British visual effects company Framestore spent more than three years creating most of the film's visual effects, which involve over 80 of its 91 minutes.
Gravity opened the 70th Venice International Film Festival on August 28, 2013, and had its North American premiere three days later at the Telluride Film Festival. Upon its release, Gravity was met with widespread critical acclaim, with high praise for its direction, visuals, cinematography, acting, and score. Considered one of the best films of 2013, it appeared on numerous critics' year-end lists, and was selected by the American Film Institute in their annual Movies of the Year list. The film became the eighth-highest-grossing film of the year with a worldwide gross of over $723 million, against a production budget of around $100 million.
Gravity received a leading 10 nominations at the 86th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress (for Bullock), and won a leading seven awards, including Best Director (for Cuarón). At the 67th British Academy Film Awards, the film received a leading 11 nominations, including Best Film and Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Bullock), and won a leading 6 awards, including Outstanding British Film and Best Director (for Cuarón). It also received 4 nominations at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (for Bullock), with Cuarón winning Best Director.
At the 19th Critics' Choice Awards, the film received 10 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress (for Bullock), and won a leading seven awards, including Best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie, Best Director (for Cuarón) and Best Actress in an Action Movie (for Bullock). Bullock also received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, while the film won the 2013 Ray Bradbury Award, and the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Since its release, it has been cited as among the best films of the 2010s and the 21st century.
Plot
The Space Shuttle Explorer, commanded by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, is in Earth orbit to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Ryan Stone is aboard on her first space mission, to perform hardware upgrades on the telescope.
During a spacewalk, Mission Control in Houston warns Explorers crew about a rapidly expanding cloud of space debris caused by the Russians shooting down a defunct spy satellite, and orders the crew to return to Earth immediately. Communication with Mission Control is lost shortly after, as more communication satellites are disabled by debris.
Debris strikes Explorer and Hubble, tearing Stone from the shuttle. Kowalski, using a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), rescues her and they return to Explorer, discovering that it has suffered catastrophic damage and the rest of the crew are dead. Kowalski decides they should use the MMU to reach the International Space Station (ISS), which is in orbit about away. He estimates that they have 90 minutes before the debris field completes an orbit and threatens them again.
On their way to the ISS, the two discuss Stone's home life and her daughter, who died young in an accident. As they approach the station, they see that the ISS's crew has evacuated using one of its two Soyuz spacecraft, with the remaining craft exhibiting damage and unable to return to Earth. Kowalski suggests using it to travel to the nearby Chinese Tiangong space station, away, to board its similar Shenzhou spacecraft and return to Earth.
They try to grab onto the ISS, but only make tenuous connection to the Soyuz's parachute cords, which are not strong enough for them both. Despite Stone's protests, Kowalski detaches himself to save her from drifting away with him. Stone enters the ISS as Kowalski floats away. Unable to establish communication with him, she concludes that she is the mission's sole survivor.
Inside the station, a fire breaks out, forcing Stone to rush to the Soyuz. As she maneuvers it away from the ISS, the tangled parachute tethers snag, preventing the spacecraft from leaving. She performs a spacewalk to cut the cables, succeeding just as the debris field returns, destroying the station. Stone angles the Soyuz towards Tiangong but discovers that the engine has no fuel.
After an attempt at radio communication with an Inuk on Earth, Stone resigns herself to her fate and shuts off the cabin's oxygen supply to commit suicide. As she begins to lose consciousness, she experiences a hallucination of Kowalski telling her to rig the Soyuz's soft landing rockets to propel the capsule towards Tiangong. Stone regains the will to go on, restoring the spacecraft's oxygen flow and rigging the landing rockets accordingly.
Unable to dock with Tiangong, Stone ejects herself from the Soyuz and uses a fire extinguisher as a makeshift thruster to travel to the rapidly deorbiting station. She enters Tiangongs Shenzhou capsule just as the station enters the upper atmosphere, and undocks.
The Shenzhou capsule re-enters the atmosphere and lands in a lake. Radio communication from Houston informs Stone that she has been tracked on radar and that rescue crews are on their way. Stone opens the hatch and sheds her space suit, allowing her to reach the surface and crawl onto the beach before standing and walking away.
Cast
Sandra Bullock as Ryan Stone, a medical engineer and mission specialist from Lake Zurich, Illinois, who is on her first space mission. According to Cuarón, Stone is "a character who lives in her own bubble", and in the film "she's trapped in her space suit." Bullock's role was extremely demanding and daunting. She called the experience "lonely" and said there was "frustrating, painful isolation" on set, but in the best way, and described her working day on the shoot as a "morose headspace". She was cast in 2010, just a few months after finalizing her divorce from Jesse James. The Hollywood Reporter estimated that Bullock would earn at least $70 million based on theatrical returns. George Clooney as Lieutenant Matthew "Matt" Kowalski, the commander of the team. Kowalski is a veteran astronaut planning to retire after the Explorer expedition. He enjoys telling stories about himself and joking with his team, and is determined to protect the lives of his fellow astronauts. Ed Harris as the voice of mission Control in Houston, Texas. Orto Ignatiussen as the voice of Aningaaq, a Greenlandic Inuk fisherman who intercepts one of Stone's transmissions. Aningaaq also appears in an eponymous short, written and directed by Gravity co-writer Jonás Cuarón, which depicts the conversation between him and Stone from his perspective. Phaldut Sharma as the voice of Shariff Dasari, the flight engineer on board the Explorer. Amy Warren as the voice of the captain of Explorer. Basher Savage as the voice of the captain of the International Space Station.
Themes Although Gravity is often considered to be a science fiction film, Cuarón told the BBC that he does not consider it such, rather seeing it as "a drama of a woman in space". According to him, the main theme of the film was "adversity" and he uses the debris as a metaphor for this.
Despite being set in space, the film uses motifs from shipwreck and wilderness survival stories about psychological change and resilience in the aftermath of a catastrophe. Cuarón uses the Stone character to illustrate clarity of mind, persistence, training, and improvisation in the face of isolation and the consequences of a relentless Murphy's law. The film incorporates spiritual or existential themes, in the facts of Stone's daughter's accidental and meaningless death, and in the necessity of summoning the will to survive in the face of overwhelming odds, without future certainties, and with the impossibility of rescue from personal dissolution without finding this willpower. Calamities occur but only the surviving astronauts see them.
The impact of scenes is heightened by alternating between objective and subjective perspectives, the warm face of the Earth and the depths of dark space, the chaos and unpredictability of the debris field, and silence in the vacuum of space with the background score giving the desired effect. The film uses very long, uninterrupted shots throughout to draw the audience into the action, but contrasts these with claustrophobic shots within space suits and capsules.
Human evolution and the resilience of life may also be seen as key themes of Gravity. The film opens with the exploration of spacethe vanguard of human civilizationand ends with an allegory of the dawn of mankind when Ryan Stone fights her way out of the water after the crash-landing, passing a frog, grabs the soil, and slowly regains her capacity to stand upright and walk. Director Cuarón said, "She's in these murky waters almost like an amniotic fluid or a primordial soup, in which you see amphibians swimming. She crawls out of the water, not unlike early creatures in evolution. And then she goes on all fours. And after going on all fours she's a bit curved until she is completely erect. It was the evolution of life in one, quick shot". Earlier imagery depicting the formation of life includes a scene after Stone enters the space station airlock, and rests in an embryonic position, surrounded by a rope strongly resembling an umbilical cord. The film also suggests themes of humanity's ubiquitous strategy of existential resilience; that, across cultures, individuals must postulate meaning, beyond material existence, wherever none can be perceived.
Some commentators have noted possible religious themes in the film. For instance, Robert Barron in The Catholic Register summarizes the tension between Gravitys technology and religious symbolism. He said, "The technology which this film legitimately celebrates ... can't save us, and it can't provide the means by which we establish real contact with each other. The Ganges in the sun, the Saint Christopher icon, the statue of Budai, and above all, a visit from a denizen of heaven, signal that there is a dimension of reality that lies beyond what technology can master or access ... the reality of God".
Production
Development As a child, Alfonso Cuarón had an affinity for space programs, dreamed of becoming an astronaut, and would watch live Moon landings on television. He was seven years old when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969 and was profoundly influenced by Neil Armstrong. At that time, his grandmother bought a new television in order to be able to see the Moon landing. He watched space films, such as A Trip to the Moon (1902), and was further drawn to films featuring the technology of space exploration and trying to honor the laws of physics, such as Marooned (1969) and Woman in the Moon (1929).