Gravity // Review
Ground-breaking visuals, nail-biting drama and Clooney’s massive dreamy face.
If you’re the kind of person that reads the film pages in free magazines - and I assume you are – then I’d confidently guess that you’ll have already seen Alfonso Caurón’s breath-taking space odyssey. Right? You have? Jolly good. Me too. I’m now going to tell you to watch it again.
See, the advantage of writing DVD reviews, rather than the cinema reviews like what m’ colleague Smiley has to do, is that it occasionally affords the luxury of multiple viewings of a film, and Gravity certainly benefits from repeat appraisal. Second time round I was less enthralled by the ground-breaking visuals, nail-biting drama and Clooney’s massive dreamy face, and I got a story that was much deeper than the trains-planes-and-automobiles-in-space I’d watched initially. Here was a film rich in metaphor and symbolism; a tale of the triumph (or otherwise) of spirit and will; an allegorical and strangely sensitive story of someone overcoming profound personal tragedy.
Don’t believe me? Fine. But answer me this question: What exactly caused the great loss in our heroine’s life? Ponder that and I think you’ll agree that there’s a deeper meaning to this story. I hope that doesn’t seem pretentiously cryptic, but it is, so it will. The thing is, I don’t want to give anything away for the kind of people that read the film pages in free magazines without having seen a movie which pretty much everyone agrees is an absolute masterpiece, myself included.
If you’re the kind of person that reads the film pages in free magazines - and I assume you are – then I’d confidently guess that you’ll have already seen Alfonso Caurón’s breath-taking space odyssey. Right? You have? Jolly good. Me too. I’m now going to tell you to watch it again.
See, the advantage of writing DVD reviews, rather than the cinema reviews like what m’ colleague Smiley has to do, is that it occasionally affords the luxury of multiple viewings of a film, and Gravity certainly benefits from repeat appraisal. Second time round I was less enthralled by the ground-breaking visuals, nail-biting drama and Clooney’s massive dreamy face, and I got a story that was much deeper than the trains-planes-and-automobiles-in-space I’d watched initially. Here was a film rich in metaphor and symbolism; a tale of the triumph (or otherwise) of spirit and will; an allegorical and strangely sensitive story of someone overcoming profound personal tragedy.
Don’t believe me? Fine. But answer me this question: What exactly caused the great loss in our heroine’s life? Ponder that and I think you’ll agree that there’s a deeper meaning to this story. I hope that doesn’t seem pretentiously cryptic, but it is, so it will. The thing is, I don’t want to give anything away for the kind of people that read the film pages in free magazines without having seen a movie which pretty much everyone agrees is an absolute masterpiece, myself included.
