Gravity (film)

Gravity (film)
Gravity
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Produced by Written by Starring Music by Alfonso Cuarn David Heyman Alfonso Cuarn Alfonso Cuarn Jons Cuarn Sandra Bullock George Clooney Steven Price

Cinematography Emmanuel Lubezki Editing by Studio Distributed by Release date(s) Alfonso Cuarn Mark Sanger Esperanto Filmoj Heyday Films Warner Bros. Pictures

August28,2013 (Venice) October3,2013 (AU) October4,2013 (US) November8,2013 (UK)

Running time Country Language Budget Box office

90 minutes United States United Kingdom English $100 million $374,076,000

Gravity is a 2013 3D science fiction thriller space drama film directed, co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Alfonso Cuarn. The film stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts who survive the mid-orbit destruction of a Space Shuttle and attempt to return to Earth. Cuarn wrote the screenplay with his son Jons and attempted to develop the project at Universal Studios. After the rights to the project were sold, the project found traction at Warner Bros. instead. The studio approached multiple actresses before casting Bullock in the female lead role. Robert Downey Jr. was also involved as the male lead before leaving the project and being replaced by Clooney. Gravity opened at the 70th Venice International Film Festival in August 2013. Its North American premiere was three days later at the Telluride Film Festival. It received a wide release in the United States and Canada on October 4, 2013. Reactions from critics and audiences alike have been overwhelmingly positive, both groups giving much praise for Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, as well as Bullock's and Clooney's performances.

Gravity (film)

Plot
Dr. Ryan Stone is a Mission Specialist on her first space shuttle mission aboard the Space Shuttle Explorer. She is accompanied by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, who is commanding his final expedition. During a spacewalk to service the Hubble Space Telescope, Mission Control in Houston warns the team about a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite, which has caused a chain reaction forming a cloud of space debris. Mission control orders that the mission be aborted. Shortly after, communications with Mission Control are lost, though the astronauts continue to transmit, hoping that the ground crew can still hear them. High-speed debris strikes the Explorer and detaches Stone from the shuttle, leaving her tumbling through space. Kowalski soon recovers Stone and they make their way back to the space shuttle. They discover the shuttle has been damaged far beyond usability and the rest of the crew is dead. They use the thruster pack to make their way to the International Space Station (ISS), which is in orbit only about 100km (60mi) away. Kowalski estimates they have 90 minutes before the debris field completes an orbit and threatens them again. En route to the ISS, the two discuss Stone's life back home and the death of her young daughter. As they approach the substantially damaged but still operational ISS, they see its crew has evacuated in one of the Soyuz modules and that the parachute of the other capsule has accidentally been deployed, rendering it useless for returning to Earth. However, Kowalski suggests the remaining Soyuz be used to travel to the nearby Chinese space station Tiangong and board one of its modules to return safely to Earth. Out of air and maneuvering power, the two try and grab onto the ISS as they fly by. Stone's leg gets entangled in Soyuz's parachute cords and then grabs a strap on Kowalski's suit. Despite Stone's protests, he detaches himself from the tether to save her from drifting away with him, and she is pulled back towards the ISS. As Kowalski floats away, he radios her additional instructions and encouragement. Nearly out of oxygen, Stone manages to enter the ISS via an airlock but must hastily make her way to the Soyuz to escape a fire. As she maneuvers the capsule away from the ISS, the tangled parachute tethers prevent Soyuz from separating from the station. She spacewalks to release the cables, succeeding just as the debris field completes its orbit and destroys the station. Stone aligns the Soyuz with Tiangong but discovers the craft's thrusters have no fuel. After a brief communication with a Greenlandic Inuit fisherman and listening to him cooing a baby, Stone resigns herself to being stranded and shuts down the oxygen supply of the cabin in order to commit a painless suicide. As she begins to lose consciousness, Kowalski appears outside and enters the capsule. Berating her for giving up, he tells her to use the Soyuz's landing rockets to propel the capsule toward Tiangong. Stone realizes that Kowalski's return was not real, and she gains new strength and the will to live on from her realization. She restores the flow of oxygen and uses the landing rockets to navigate toward Tiangong. Unable to dock the Soyuz with the station, Stone ejects herself via explosive decompression and uses a fire extinguisher as a makeshift thruster to travel to Tiangong. Space debris has knocked Tiangong from its trajectory, and it begins rapidly deorbiting. Stone enters the Shenzhou capsule just as Tiangong starts to break up on the upper edge of the atmosphere. As the capsule re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, Stone hears Mission Control over the radio tracking the capsule. It lands in a lake, but an electrical fire inside the capsule forces Stone to evacuate immediately. Opening the capsule hatch allows water to rapidly fill the capsule, which sinks, forcing Stone to shed her spacesuit underwater and swim ashore. She takes her first shaky steps on land, in the full gravity of Earth, where she awaits rescue.

Gravity (film)

Cast
Sandra Bullock as Dr. Ryan Stone: A medical engineer and Mission Specialist on her first mission in space. George Clooney as Lieutenant Matt Kowalski: The commander of the team, Kowalski is a veteran astronaut planning to retire after the Explorer expedition. He enjoys telling stories about himself and joking with the team, but is also determined to protect the lives of his fellow astronauts. Ed Harris (voice) as Mission Control in Houston, Texas. Orto Ignatiussen (voice) as Aningaaq: A Greenlandic Inuit fisherman who intercepts one of Stone's transmissions. Aningaaq also appears in a self-titled short which depicts the conversation between him and Stone from his perspective. Paul Sharma (voice) as Shariff Dasari: The flight engineer on board the Explorer. Shariff has a wife and child and keeps a family photo on his suit. Amy Warren (voice) as Explorer captain. Basher Savage (voice) as Russian Space Station Captain

Themes
Despite being set in outer space, the film draws upon motifs from shipwrecked and wilderness survival stories about psychological change and resilience in the aftermath of catastrophe. Cuarn uses Stone to illustrate clarity of mind, persistence, training, and improvisation in the face of isolation and the mortal consequences of a relentless Murphy's Law. Cuarn employs a number of metaphorical shots portraying Stone devolving and curling up as though in a womb after entering the relative safety of the International Space Station, and re-evolving by crawling out from the lake's waters. A spiritual theme is explicit in Stone's appeal to prayer for the first time in her life at the moment she expects to die in the Soyuz. This is quickly followed by the return of Kowalski as an ambiguous figure in the form of an apparition or perhaps angel who, with good humor and a calming demeanor, restores Stone's will to live. A brief glimpse of an icon of Saint Christopher carrying a child in the Russian vehicle and a statue of a Budai on the Chinese vehicles reinforce the theme of salvation in faith. These figures contrast with a plastic Marvin the Martian action figure that is seen floating among corpses in the destroyed American vehicle. Stone's water immersion upon landing on Earth and her crawling out on to an idyllic lake shore, wobbly-kneed as she adapts to gravity, can be seen as an allusion to a baptismal rebirth. This final scene could also be a reference to evolution: the sequence begins with Stone swimming in water (oceans theoretically harbored the first cellular forms of life). She then crawls out of the water, struggles to support herself on her arms and knees (quadrupedal stance), moves on to a hunched-back bipedal posture, and finally stands erect. The film also meditates on spiritual themes both in terms of Ryan's daughter's accidental death, the will to survive in the face of inevitable death, as well as the futility of rescue. Calamities unfold but there are no witnesses to them save for the surviving astronauts. The impact of scenes is heightened by alternating between objective and subjective perspectives, the warm face of the planet and the depths of dark space, the chaos but also predictability of the deadly debris field, and silence of the vacuum of space with the sound of the score. The film uses very long and uninterrupted shots throughout to draw the audience into the action but also contrasts these with claustrophobic shots within space suits and capsules. Cuarn also pays homage to other classics set in space by employing Ed Harris as the voice of Mission Control (a nod to his roles in Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff), evokes Sigourney Weaver's vulnerable Ellen Ripley from Alien, and the extravehicular use of a fire extinguisher also recalls an important scene from WALL-E.

Gravity (film)

Production
Development
The project was in development at Universal Pictures for several years. Warner Bros. acquired the project, which in February 2010, attracted the attention of Angelina Jolie, who had rejected a sequel to Wanted. Later in the month, she passed on the project, partially because the studio did not want to pay the $20 million fee she had received for her latest two movies, but also because she wanted to work on directing her Bosnian war film In the Land of Blood and Honey. In March, Robert Downey, Jr. entered talks to be cast in the male lead role. In mid-2010, Marion Cotillard tested for the female lead role. By August 2010, Scarlett Johansson and Blake Lively were in the running for the role. In September, Cuarn received approval from Warner Bros. to offer the role without a screen test to Natalie Portman, who was being praised for her then-recently released film Black Swan. Portman passed on the project due to scheduling conflicts, and Warner Bros. then approached Sandra Bullock for the role. In November 2010, Downey left the project to star in How to Talk to Girls, a project in development with Shawn Levy attached to direct. The following December, with Bullock signed for the co-lead role, George Clooney replaced Downey. A big challenge for the team was the question of how to shoot long takes in a zero-g environment. Eventually the team decided to use computer-generated imagery for the spacewalk scenes, and automotive robots to move Bullock's character for interior space station scenes. This meant that shots and blocking had to be planned well in advance in order for the robots to be programmed.

Filming
Gravity had a production budget of $100 million and was filmed digitally on Arri Alexas. Principal photography on the film began in late May 2011. Live elements were shot at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios in the United Kingdom, The landing scene was filmed at Lake Powell, Arizona. Visual effects were supervised by Tim Webber at Framestore in London. The 3D was designed and supervised by Chris Parks. The majority of the 3D was created through stereo rendering the CG at Framestore with the rest post converted, principally at Prime Focus, London with additional conversion work by Framestore. Prime Focus's supervisor was Richard Baker. Filming began in London in May 2011. The film contains about 200 or so cutaways, which is significantly fewer than most films of this length. Although the first trailer had audible explosions and other sounds, in the final film these scenes are silent: "They put in explosions [in the trailer]. As we know, there is no sound in space. In the film, we don't do that." The sound track in the film's space scenes is populated only by the musical score and sounds astronauts would hear in their suits or the space vehicles. Most of Bullock's shots were done with her inside of a giant mechanical rig. Getting into the rig took a significant amount of time, so Bullock opted to stay in it for up to 10 hours a day, communicating with others only through a headset. Cuarn said his biggest challenge was to make the set feel as inviting and non-claustrophobic as possible. The team attempted to do this by having a massive celebration when Bullock arrived each day. They also nicknamed the rig "Sandy's cage" and gave it a lighted sign reflecting this.

Gravity (film)

Music
Composer Steven Price composed the incidental music to Gravity. In early September 2013, a 23-minute preview of the soundtrack was released online. A soundtrack album was released digitally on September 17, 2013 and in physical formats on October 1, 2013 by WaterTower Music. Additional songs featured in the film include: "Angels Are Hard to Find" by Hank Williams, Jr. "Sinigit Meerannguaq" by Juaaka Lyberth "Destination Anywhere" by Chris Benstead and Robin Baynton "922 Anthem" by 922 (feat. Gaurav Dayal) "Ready" by Charles Scott (feat. Chelsea Williams)

In most of the film's official trailers, "Spiegel im Spiegel" was used, written by Estonian composer Arvo Prt in 1978.

Release
Gravity was released in 3D and IMAX 3D on October 4, 2013. The film's release coincided with the beginning of World Space Week, observed from October 4 to 10. The film was originally scheduled to be released on November 21, 2012, before being re-scheduled for a 2013 release in order to complete extensive post-production effects work.

Reception
Box office
As of October 31, 2013, Gravity has grossed $206,066,013 in North America, and $164,400,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $370,466,013. Preliminary reports had the film tracking for a debut of over $40 million in North America. The film earned $1.4 million from its Thursday night showings, and reached a $17.5 million Friday total. It went on to break Paranormal Activity 3's record as the biggest October and autumn openings ever, as the film brought in $55.8 million. Of the film's opening weekend gross, 80 percent of the total was derived from its 3D showings for a sum of $44 millionwhich also includes $11.2 million, or 20 percent of the total receipts, from IMAX 3D showings, the highest percentage ever for a film opening more than $50 million.

Critical reception
Gravity had its world premiere at the 70th Venice International Film Festival on August 28, where it received universal acclaim from critics and audiences, praising the acting, direction, screenplay, cinematography, visual effects, production design, the use of 3D, and Steven Price's musical score. Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 97% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 257 reviews with a "Certified Fresh" rating, with an average score of 9.1/10. The site's consensus states: "Alfonso Cuarn's Gravity is an eerie, tense sci-fi thriller that's masterfully directed and visually stunning." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 96 (citing "universal acclaim") based on 48 reviews. CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the average grade cinemagoers gave Gravity was A- on an A+ to F scale. Matt Zoller Seitz, writing on RogerEbert.com, gave the film a maximum four stars, stating that "Alfonso Cuarn's Gravity, about astronauts coping with disaster, is a huge and technically dazzling film and that the film's panoramas of astronauts tumbling against starfields and floating through space station interiors are at once informative and lovely." At Variety, Justin Chang posits that the film "restores a sense of wonder, terror and possibility to the bigscreen that should inspire awe among critics and audiences worldwide." Richard Corliss of Time proclaimed that "Cuarn shows things that cannot be but, miraculously, are, in the fearful, beautiful reality of the space world above

Gravity (film) our world. If the film past is dead, Gravity shows us the glory of cinema's future. It thrills on so many levels. And because Cuarn is a movie visionary of the highest order, you truly can't beat the view." He also admired that "Beyond technology, Cuarn plays daringly and dexterously with point-of-view: at one moment you're inside Ryan's helmet as she surveys the bleak silence, then in a subtle shift you're outside to gauge her reaction. The 3-D effects, added in post-production, provide their own extraterrestrial startle: a hailstorm of debris hurtles at you, as do a space traveler's thoughts at the realization of being truly alone in the universe." The film was praised by filmmaker James Cameron, who said, "I think it's the best space photography ever done, I think it's the best space film ever done, and it's the movie I've been hungry to see for an awful long time", and Quentin Tarantino, who named it one of the ten best movies of 2013 so far.

Accolades
The film has been mentioned as a considerable choice for several nominations at the 86th Academy Awards, specifically awards for Best Picture, Cuarn for directing, Lubezki for his cinematography, and Bullock for her performance.

List of awards and nominations

Year Award Category Recipients and nominees Result Won Won

2013 Venice Film Festival

Future Film Digital Award Alfonso Cuarn Sandra Bullock

Hollywood Film Festival Best Actress

Scientific accuracy
Cuarn has stated that the film is not always scientifically accurate and that some liberties were needed to sustain the story. Nevertheless, the film has been praised for the realism of its premises and its overall adherence to physical principles, despite a number of inaccuracies and exaggerations. According to NASA Astronaut Michael J. Massimino, who took part in two Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Missions (STS-109 and STS-125), "nothing was out of place, nothing was missing. There was a one-of-a-kind wirecutter we used on one of my spacewalks and sure enough they had that wirecutter in the movie." Astronaut Buzz Aldrin called the visual effects "remarkable". He adds, "I was so extravagantly impressed by the portrayal of the reality of zero gravity. Going through the space station was done just the way that I've seen people do it in reality. The spinning is going to happenmaybe not quite that vigorousbut certainly we've been fortunate that people haven't been in those situations yet. I think it reminds us that there really are hazards in the space business, especially in activities outside the spacecraft." Garrett Reisman, a former NASA Astronaut, noted that, "The pace and story was definitely engaging and I think it was the best use of the 3-D IMAX medium to date. Rather than using the medium as a gimmick, 'Gravity' uses it to depict a real environment that is completely alien to most people. But the question that most people want me to answer is, how realistic was it? The very fact that the question is being asked so earnestly is a testament to the verisimilitude of the movie. When a bad science fiction movie comes out, no one bothers to ask me if it reminded me of the real thing."

Gravity (film)

On the other hand, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronomer and skeptic Phil Plait, and veteran NASA astronaut and spacewalker Scott E. Parazynski have offered comments about some of the most "glaring" inaccuracies. Examples of such mistakes include: The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which is being repaired at the beginning of the movie, has an altitude of about 559 kilometers (347mi), and an orbital inclination of 28.5 degrees. The ISS has an altitude of around 420 kilometers (260mi), and an orbital inclination of 51.65 degrees. With such significant differences in orbital parameters, it would be impossible to travel between them without precise preparation, planning, calculation, appropriate technology and a large amount of fuel.

Once out of suit, Stone's hair would have floated freely on her head in zero gravity. She also was not shown to have worn a liquid-cooled ventilation garment or a diaper or even socks under the EVA suit, all of which are always put on to protect against temperature extremes of space. Stone's tears first roll down her face in zero gravity, and later are seen floating off her face. Without sufficient force to dislodge the tears, the tears would remain on her face due to surface tension. However, the movie does correctly portray the spherical appearance of liquid drops in a micro-gravity environment. When Kowalski unclips his tether and floats away to his doom to save Stone from being pulled away from the ISS, his velocity is zero (no momentum). As Astronomer Phil Plait point out, all Stone had to do was give the tether a gentle tug and Kowalski wouldve been safely pulled toward her.[1] During reentry, Stone's helmet and other objects are still floating inside the capsule despite the fact that it is already decelerating through the atmosphere. Despite the inaccuracies in Gravity, Tyson, Plait and Parazynski have all said they enjoyed watching the film. Aldrin hoped that the film would stimulate the public to find an interest in space again, after decades of diminishing investments into advancements in the field.

Comparison of International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope orbits

References
[1] http:/ / www. slate. com/ blogs/ bad_astronomy/ 2013/ 10/ 04/ ba_movie_review_gravity. html

External links
Official website (http://www.gravitymovie.com) Gravity (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/) at the Internet Movie Database Gravity (http://www.allrovi.com/movies/movie/v523235) at AllRovi Gravity (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=gravity.htm) at Box Office Mojo Gravity (http://www.metacritic.com/movie/gravity) at Metacritic Gravity (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gravity_2013/) at Rotten Tomatoes

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