Watching GRAVITY

Image © Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.

When I was a child I devoured science fiction, and dreamed of someday going out into space. Now I feel I have, through this film. I’ve seen actual video of astronauts in space, but it’s always controlled, placid, distant. This film pulls you right in the action, not just through 3D but through an immersive and intense drama that makes the visual beauty of open space as real as the dizzying dangers of free-fall without any means of controlling your own spin and movement. It makes the cluttered, claustrophobic interiors of space vehicles and the impossible fragility of man and his artificial constructs very real as well. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are excellent in their roles, but it’s Bullock’s picture. She convincingly scrambles from one thin hope of survival to another while being bombarded with both physical and mental debris and roadblocks.

Reading the science fiction magazines, as I used to do regularly, there were some like “Galaxy,” “Worlds of If,” and “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” that played with scientific ideas, but often fast and loose and far from reality. Then there was “Astounding,” later called “Analog,” that tried to keep things more real: basing their stories on proven science extrapolated a little into the future. No time warps, faster than light travel, aliens in flying saucers or fantasy. Their approach became known as “hard science fiction.” “Gravity” is the BEST hard science fiction film. I’ve ever seen. Parts of “200l: A Space Odyssey” came closest before this one, but “Gravity” is an amazing trip into what it’s really like out there. And that childhood dream of going into space? I think I’ll pass. It’s beautiful but oh, so dangerous up there!