On the Contrary, Gravity is Foremost on my Mind

One can hardly begin talking about Gravity without recalling the charming scene from the beginning of Star Trek V: the Awful Star Trek With Spock's Brother (I don't think that's its official name, but it should be)...




 It may have been a terrible movie (Star Trek: the Motion Picture, worse or better than Star Trek V: the Final Frontier, ready, set, GO IN COMMENTS) but it had some wonderfully quotable moments as well.

Now that that is out of the way, we're going to talk about Gravity. You'll notice the capital "g," which means we're talking about a proper noun instead of the more generic gravity-with-a-little-g, you know, the sort of thing that trips us. So, yes, that means we're talking about the movie.

Well, I'm not actually going to talk a whole lot about the movie, but the wonderful lessons the filmmakers and TV writers and penny-dreadful, pulp writers in Hollywood and beyond should take from the movie.

So, let's get the prerequisite rating and such out of the way. If you don't know what this movie is, there's probably a rock somewhere you call your house, but I'll humor you with a brief recount: it's a scientifiction/disaster story that takes place on a space shuttle mission and stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney (and only the two of them). Directed and written by Alfonso Cuarón (perhaps best known for the wonderful Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien, one of the better films to come out of Mexico in recent years)(and Great Expectations, one of my brother & sister's favorite movies)

I loved it. Really, I did. Nearly everything about it. And this is from a self-admitted notoriously harsh critic. Probably the best movie I've seen this year, and I don't anticipate anything bumping it from that spot (yes, even a Hobbit or Book Thief).

• I thought the actors did a wonderful job, neither under- nor over-acting. George Clooney gets by on being charming George Clooney, but really that's what we like him for. Sandra Bullock is likeable and relatable, but realistically so. She felt more like an everyday person than the hero of a big-budget summer blockbuster film. Which is good. 
• The story was beautifully paced, building and releasing tension (and you know how much I love that) at just the right times so that you don't get too worn or burned out. But it still kept you on your seat.
• The effects were beautiful (and one of the few movies that benefited from 3-D), and supported the story rather than distracting from it.
• The music and sound FX wonderfully enhance without detracting from everything else.
• The writing was crisp and, well, normal. Sandra B's lines were like normal people talked! Well, maybe not as much George Clooney, but by golly he's GEORGE CLOONEY he's charming enough he can get away with it.
• Suspension of Disbelief was maintained completely from start to finish. Sure, there have been some nitpicks by people wanting to bitch and moan, but everything served the story, built on the themes of the movie, and did not appear implausible or distracting.

If i were to star-rate it, which I"m generally not prone to do except that people like to see that sort of thing, I would give it 4 out of 5 stars. Which is especially impressive because that's really as high of a rating as you can receive without being The Princess Bride or Back to the Future (the two perfect movies).

I actually spent more time on the movie than I intended. But now onto the other stuff, the stuff I really wanted to mention.

I hope that the producers and directors and actors and (most importantly) writers notice this movie. Why? Because it is such a wonderful example of how a small story can be powerful. You don't have to threaten the world, or blow up a city, or build the biggest robot spaceship ever to make a good story. Good stories are powerful; good stories are about people, people like you and I caught in tremendous circumstances. It's okay to focus on the tremendous people rather than the outlandish circumstances.

It's no secret that Hollywood has become enamored with style over substance lately, and maybe lately is a generous assessment. We, as a movie-going, ticket-buying demographic, shoulder our fair share of the blame for this. Every time we go to the movies, or rent from Redbox we are voting for the type of movie we want to see Hollywood produce, and those are the only votes that the motion picture studios listen to.

We're Americans, we're the richest, most affluent society that has every existed on planet Earth, and we like this big and loud and outlandish. That's okay, and there's a place for that.

It's okay to be quiet, to be close, personal. There's room to wait, to breathe.

To catch our breath. To suffocate, slowly.

In the battle of epic motion pictures, there's only so many cities and planets and populations you can blow up. The Star Trek reboot destroyed Vulcan in it's first movie! Superman and the Avengers leveled city block after city block to save the world from mass destruction in their first movies. Where else do you go? How can you keep getting bigger and bigger? There's only so many times you can threaten the fate of the (fictional) world (nobody cares about because they have no connection with it) before we don't care anymore. We've seen that special effect already.

Superman's greatest battles are not with massively over-powered supervillains, but rather the little choices he has to make every single day to do the right thing, the hard thing, when it would be so easy for him to rule over the earth with an iron fist if he chose. No one could stop him. But he chooses, every single day, to be something less than he is so that the rest of us can be something more than we are.

I applaud Iron Man 3 in this regard. It was hardly a perfect movie, but it worked very hard to stop the cycle of one-upsmanship. It didn't try to be bigger than The Avengers, or even Iron Man 2. It narrowed the focus back to the character, and let us see weakness and dealing with that weakness.

So go out, and vote with your wallets. It's okay to chose style sometimes, but try to chose substance just as often. It will strengthen all of the stories.We don't want the scales to tip too far in one direction or the other. We need that balance, because that's where we'll find the next movie like The Matrix, a beautiful blend of style and substance. But The Matrix is a post for another day.