When the force of gravity pull you down.

It's for me an honour to make my first review about such a great movie like Gravity. Alfonso and Jonas Cuaron (father and son) tell us a survival story where two engineers from NASA are trying to repair the Hubble telescope. Everything goes all right until an accident happens, a spatial debris destroy the spaceship and its crew leaving only two survivors, Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). Then a rush start to arrive to the ISS (International Space Station) and get back to Earth alive before the air reserve of their backpacks run out.

The plot is as simple as direct. The movie keeps you tightened since the very beginning until the end, there is no time to relax oneself. The acting of the actors is superb, take for sure that you are going to suffer as much as the protagonists do. In addition the soundtrack composed by Steven Price is really helpful to make you feel the loneliness, despair and stress that the protagonists do. A magnificent mixture of acoustic and electronic music was placed in order to make you feel as if you were adrift in space. Nowadays it is commonplace to find many movies in 3D format. Some directors are really skilful with this technology while some others don’t use it properly and it becomes a strategy to earn more money. Is this movie worthy to be watched in 3D format? Absolutely, thanks to this format Alfonso Cuaron transmits a strong feeling of vertigo and makes you fear for your own safety.

That’s the analyses of the movie above, but what about the science in the movie? Well, I must say this movie, contrary to most of the movies set in space, is really respectful with the physics laws of nature. Gravity and inertia are the real protagonist all along. The behaviour of these titanic forces are properly represented. Ryan and Matt have a constant struggle against gravity in order to not fall down to Earth. At those heights the force of gravity is so weak that allow any sort of object to float. The effect is the same outside and inside the ISS. Meanwhile in many movies gravity appears again when the characters get in the spaceship and allow them to walk on the floor as it happens on the Earth’s ground. Another example is when the debris hit against the spaceship. It never stops or decrease its speed because there isn’t any medium in space so there isn’t friction forces as well. Furthermore, the filmmakers were able to offer a spectacular scene when the spaceship is destroyed by the spatial debris without using any sound or any explosion of fire. Fire blows up very often in action movies but it isn’t realistic at all in movies set in space. Because the space is completely and utterly empty, there’s no air so there isn’t oxygen as well to spread fire and sound can’t be transmitted in the void. The models of the spacesuits, the spaceship and the ISS shown in the movie are very well detailed. In fact all the aspects of the movie were so carefully taken that it is hard to put it in the science fiction genre because everything which is told in the film could happen.

What could you expect of this movie? It’s a very emotive and exciting movie about survival with breathtaking images of our beloved planet. The respect for physics laws of nature is taken to the extreme and the visual representation of space technology and NASA models are extremely detailed as well. The 3D technology takes you the nearest the most of the people will be from outer space. The filmmakers put the technology at the service of the film, not the opposite. In my view the experience offered by this film is highly recommended. Don’t let it go!

Interesting links:
File of the movie on imdb
Information about the ISS offered by ESA

I wanted to put a link to the NASA web page but due to the lapse in federal government funding,the website is not available. I will actualize the post when it was.