Gravity

2013 - Dir.: Alfonso Cuarón - 1 hours 31 minutes (UK)Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 30th August, 2014

There's a sequence in Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey” in which the rebelling supercomputer Hal throws a space pod at astronaut Frank Poole, sending him spinning silently through the empty void. This sequence is effectively expanded to feature-film length in “Gravity”. Created through a painstaking combination of physical and digital performance that shatters the divide between live action and animation, “Gravity” boasts a level of sheer visual inventiveness that would have left Stanley Kubrick's head spinning. Aided by the technicians at London's Framestore, “Gravity” invites us to gaze in awe at the cinematic spectacle of space, to marvel at the weighty mysteries of this big-screen cosmos. And marvel you will, as director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki opens a Pandora's paintbox of light, bouncing the brilliant reflections of celestial bodies around the virtual set with a clear, crisp precision. It is, in the best sense, a fairground ride of a film, sweeping you off your feet, turning you upside down, spinning you right round and round and round… before dropping you back down to Earth; wobbly legged, jaw dropped and appropriately light-headed. You have been warned!
The majority of the film was shot digitally at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios. Only the final scene was shot on 65mm film because, as will become clear, the director needed to create a completely different atmosphere. 80 of Gravity’s 91 minutes were created by digital special effects which took 3 years to create. Who says the camera never lies?

COULD IT HAPPEN?
Director Alfonso Cuarón admits that some scientific truths are bent in the interests of drama - however, the film's cascade of debris is a very real possibility. This scenario is known as the Kessler syndrome. A cascading Kessler syndrome involving an object the size of the International Space Station would trigger a catastrophic chain-reaction of debris. The orbiting debris field would make it impossible to launch space exploration missions or satellites for many decades.