Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris, Orto Ignatiussen, Phaldut Sharma, Amy Warren, Basher Savage.
There are seminal moments in cinema, moments of pure genius that you have to applaud and make note of to tell your grandchildren just how exceptional the film was so they can be inspired to find their own defining film moment. The instant when you knew that all your cinema going days had been but a test for your senses to get acclimatised to for the sheer majesty that is about to hit them in Alfonso and Jonas Cuaron’s mouth-watering, jaw dropping, heart thumping spectacle, Gravity.
With nothing to distract the flow and intensity of the film, the enormity of Gravity is allowed to flourish and grow in a way that only the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey was allowed to breathe and take its place in cinema history. Nothing to distract the film goer except the stunning special effects, the absorbing way in which parallels are drawn of the ascent and decent of man, of the safety between the cocoon of an oxygen filled spaceship and the womb and of Sandra Bullock’s finest moment on screen. Nothing can prepare you for just how good Ms. Bullock is in Gravity, the hope and sheer determination to stay alive is what drives us as a species, her terrifying tumble and the fear, not of becoming an astronautical version of Icarus but of just floating away. It isn’t the fall that kills, it is just drifting off into the void.
Of course in parts the science doesn’t up to close scrutiny but since when does that stop a film from being anything but wonderful? What it should do is further the interest in space exploration once more, of that fact alone, to have stirred the imagination of any young girl or boy into taking a wider look at the realms beyond our home planet is one that deserves a standing ovation on its own.
No matter how large or full of the latest technological wizzardry your television is, this film will never have justice thrust upon it by sitting in your own home and watching with your favourite cup of tea steaming away by your chair. This film, like Cleopatra, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, is one that deserves every single inch of a cinema screen to do it complete justice. An unbelievable and exceptional film; magnificently captured by the imagination of Alfonso and Jonas Cuaron and one in which Sandra Bullock gives the performance of her life. Simply awesome!
Ian D. Hall