Since I watch a lot of movies, I've obviously seen the movie Children of Men by Alfonso Cuarón. If you consider yourself by any means a self respecting cinephile and haven't seen it, drop what you're doing and get it at V-Stock. It's an amazing movie. Clive Owen is like a British George Clooney with a better range. The film is stunning to look at and has not one, but two iconic long takes. It's a brilliantly crafted and, more importantly, persuasive and compelling story. Pretty much everything is great about it from the title cards to the awkward boner inducing Ghana boobs.
So I was pretty excited to see his most recent movie, Gravity (2013)
More On the Director
Alfonso Cuarón is a Mexican director that
actually has worked in just about every major position in the industry, from DP
to editor. Funny thing about him is that I've seen all of his movies. The
reason that's funny is because it was completely by accident. A lot of movie
buffs will boast about seeing every movie from a certain director. I've seen
every one of Alfonso's films and didn't even know it until I did research for
this blog, and the reason is because he's managed to both make very few movies
and also be incredibly diverse.
The most surprising entry in his filmography is A Little Princess (1995). When I was
little, this movie was my shit. I watched pretty much this, The Lion King (1994), Big Rock Candy
Mountain (1991 [good luck finding this, it was a glorious straight-to-video
classic]), and Geppetto (2000 [yes, the shitty Drew Carrey musical]). I had no
idea he directed it, and if you watched it, you would never know it was by him.
Then he did an independent film, Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001), back home in Mexico.
He wrote it with his brother, Carlos. This, again, I had forgotten was directed
by him. I'm not crazy about it. It was a more slow paced, character driven
drama. It's not that I don't like those kinds of movies, it's just that very
realist, cerebral movies either hit or miss depending on the person. Two things
I can say I really disliked about the movie was the narration, the audio of
which seemed intentionally louder than the diagetic sound, which was jarring,
and the sheer amount of man-ass in the film.
He also did the very well received Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,
which is often credited with giving the series a darker aesthetic, and had
werewolves and shit.
So Alfonso Cuarón is a pretty remarkable filmmaker,
and quite frankly it's Baby Back Bullshit that
when people say how Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers, David Fincher,
etc. are the best filmmakers today, they don't also mention Alfonso. *
So now we can talk about Gravity for real.
The Movie
Let me go ahead and answer the question on
everyone's mind. Yes, it is worth it to see this in 3D. Maybe even in IMAX if
you're a big spender. In fact it's almost not worth it without the 3D. Let me
be clear, almost. It's still a good
movie on its own, but it's kind of like vanilla ice cream. It's good by itself,
but why would you even get it without toppings? Not even some fruit? Get a
fucking life.
The 3D made it a truly stunning visual experience.
There's a little confusion as to whether we can credit that to the
cinematographers or the special effects artists (sort of like Life of Pi [2012]). Let's just say it was
the cinematographers, the SFX people are getting screwed anyway**. It sounds
dumb to say this, but it really did feel like you were floating in space. It
really was a gorgeous film. Much like Days
of Heaven (1978), the movie will be remembered for how awesome it looks.
Seriously, it's an optical wet dream. That's enough of a reason to see it.
It's got a good story going for it as well. The
thing is, it's pretty much just a
good story. There's been a lot of buzz around this film, a lot of it being due
to the 3D, which is well deserved, but there's also talk of it being
"amazing science fiction" and one of the greatest tales of the
decade. I think we all need to take a step back. Take a big step back, say,
seven years, and then we can talk. I'm talking about Children of Men. I know, I know. It's my first review and I'm
already rambling about the wrong film. It's important though, so listen. Children of Men was Cuarón's
masterpiece, not this.
 |
| Days of Heaven (1978)- Seriously. Hnnnnnng |
The story is pretty simple and everyone's been
talking about it, so I'll spare you a long winded summary. It's really just
about Sandra Bullock and George Clooney trying to get themselves out of what
NASA defines in the astronauts handbook as "The Shittiest Space Disaster
Ever". It's a really clean, accessible conflict-solution-more conflict
type plot. It isn't super complex, but that's what I like about it. It's got
heart pounding tension and action, but the plot is so clean and simple, avoiding
complexity or subplots, that the entire experience becomes pretty serine.
Another thing that helps is the fact that they have no sound effects in the
outer space scenes. I love that. Neil DeGrasse Tyson can complain all he wants
about the scientific inaccuracies, but the whole sound in space thing is
finally coming to an end. That's a pretty big milestone.
The interesting thing about this movie that I don't
think people are questioning enough is the symbolism. There's all this natal
and womb symbolism going on that I'm not sure that I'm buying. Here's where I
spoil the movie, so stop reading if you haven't seen it. Sandra Bullock's
character, hereafter referred to as Dr. Ryan Stone, once had a daughter who
died in a tragic accident. She has not yet gotten over the guilt and sorrow of
losing a child, and the "what ifs" that go along with this kind of
loss are still weighing on her. She's sort of a broken soul, and this is the
touchstone of her character. Overall, this makes her sympathetic enough and we do end up rooting for her. The only
problem is that this characterization is delivered pretty clumsily about a
third of the way into the film. Since the whole film requires a sense of real
time to work, there was no way to deliver that exposition other than pretty
much outright saying it. Flashbacks (or scenes not then and there) would have
taken us out of the movie, so it was a greater challenge to develop the
characters. I respect Cuarón for taking the challenge.
Anyway, once Stone's backstory is established,
that's when the symbolism comes in. There's one scene in particular which I
wasn't sure if I liked or found annoying. By this point, (spoilers) Stone is
all on her own. She arrives at an abandoned Russian space station and is
rapidly running out of oxygen. She needs to move fast, and once she gets in, she
must move even faster to get home alive. After an extremely intense sequence
where she barely makes it into the station, she finally breathes, takes off her
space suit, and curls into the fetal position. Keep in mind, the clock is
ticking. Nevertheless, she slowly curls into the fetal position while her
tether floats in the atmosphere to look like an umbilical cord. She does this
for apparently no other reason than to look symbolic. She must have recently
seen 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was a
neat image. The only issue I took with it was that it was a little heavy
handed, and potentially a little derivative as well. That's being a little too
picky, though.
The only other problem I had with the film was, I
hate to say, George Clooney. Don't get me wrong, I like Clooney despite the
fact that he doesn't have much range. The character, however, could have been
better. At times he was a really great character, but his excessive dialogue
brought him down. His actions and relationship with Stone were extremely well
written, but his words were not. It seems like whenever he did something, it
was very carefully thought about and compelling. Whenever he said something,
it's like somebody just wrote cheap "eccentric veteran" dialogue. He
kept telling these really "amusing" and irrelevant stories. I get
what they were trying to do, it's just that whenever they did it I just
couldn't buy that someone would actually say that when they were trying to
escape the hellish vacuum of space...
 |
| See what I'm saying? This isn't really a fair argument, though. Just an interesting coincidence |
But enough of the negative. Let's delve into one
more positive.
Sandra Bullock was simply amazing in this movie. I
recall her saying something like, this was the best work she's ever done, and
I'm inclined to agree with her. I'm actually surprised because I've never been
a Bullock fan. She's in this really terrible movie called Practical Magic which plays at least once a week on ABC Family. It
has the most maddeningly annoying score ever written. But in Gravity, she sells it and she sells it
well. It's weird. She almost starts off as a damsel in distress, but if the
prince gets sucked into the cosmos and says "fuck it, you're on your
own". She was a really likeable, sympathetic, and intriguing character. I
really can't say enough of how good she was in this movie. She struck this
perfect balance of at once being a strong and level headed character while at
other times being completely consumed by fear and panic. She came off as very
human. Not only that, but the look of her character was well conceived. Her
physical appearance, movements, and expressions had this very watchable and
charming, tomboyish quality to them. There was an attractive mix of femininity
and masculinity that one can only find in a Thai ladyboy.
So Gravity,
I can confirm, is pretty much as good as everyone says it is, just for different
reasons.
Fun fact, Cuarón is currently making a TV show about
a girl with mysterious powers and her escaped-convict guardian. It sounds very
del Toro-y.
Movies
I Also Saw This Week
Modern
Times (1936), Lords of Salem (2013), Movie 43 (2013)***
*Nothing against those other directors. It would be
true to say they are some of the greatest modern filmmakers.
**Seriously, google that shit. The SFX industry is a
nightmare.
***I saw half of it. It was getting late, so I had
to shut it off. I'll have to finish it another time. It was frighteningly
awful, to the point where I got physically uncomfortable trying to figure out
why this movie ever happened.
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