Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)

[FerdinandGriffon]

Alien is probably the best benchmark for what Gravity is trying to achieve. That film has plenty of talk, character development, psychology, exposition, and what have you. But these elements are all integrated into the whole, come at the right times, don't draw you out of the moment with cliches, emotional manipulations,obvious parallels and stories about life back home, don't indulge in cute tricks like dream sequences and solo characters talking out loud for the audience's benefit, and generally try and keep things, short, snappy, and to the point. It's not perfect, but Hill is very good at stripping down dialogue to necessities while still maintaining genre and Hollywood conventions.

You say I'm preaching to the converted but you seem reluctant to recognize all these problems could significantly change the shape and experience of the film. It's very confusing to me.

[warren oates]

Because I'm only converted when it comes to these two choices: no dead child backstory/monologue, no Ghost Clooney. If those are really your only major problems with the film, it's hard to see how you couldn't, you know, just get over them like I did. Do a little super edit in your brain when they happen and go on appreciating the rest of the film for how good it is.

I like Alien too but I don't get the comparisons. In the abstract, I suppose they're both relatively "contained" space thrillers. Beyond that, though, they couldn't be more different. As I've been arguing, Gravity has more in common with terrestrial survival thrillers than most other space set films. Yet because it does take place in a technologically complex and alien environment, it necessarily requires more exposition.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Fair enough. My original point was, and remains, that the film is not stripped down. And you seem to be saying that it is, but only after you mentally strip it. By my estimation, my ideal Superedit would be about 15-20 minutes shorter

Spoiler

(cutting the Ghost Clooney and other sentimental Clooney interactions, embryonic floating, lotsa Bullock muttering to herself, final struggle/birth underwater, backstory)

. That's a sizeable part of a 90 minute movie, distributed throughout its length, and obviously these portions couldn't be simply excised, but would have to be replaced by better alternatives or executions. In other words, it's a film with significant flaws, flaws that are deeply imbedded in its conception and inevitably affect its larger structure. I feel no need to make excuses for Gravity when there are other movies that have found better solutions to the same problems. Like Alien, a thriller about a woman trapped in the eerie silence of outer space who works together with her crew-mates and alone to escape back to Earth from the inhuman force that pursues her.

[warren oates]

But part of what if feels like you're ignoring about Alien is that, at least until the moment each one gets eaten, Ripley's got way more people to talk out the talky exposition with. If a "better" solution is just to have more characters to distract you from the fact that they're all delivering important narrative information than you've already sort of hamstrung yourself into a massive rewrite that changes the nature of what Gravity aspires to be.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Not at all. For the umpteenth time, the dialogue that works as exposition of the world and Bullock's perogatives is not wasted, though it does come with a cost that eventually becomes part of a deficit. It's the stuff that you agree is surplus that is the problem, and Alien didn't indulge in it, no matter how many characters it added to the mix. I don't want Clooney out of the picture. I want him to be a better written character, with more realistic, less bloated interactions with Bullock. I want character and emotion to be something that comes through action, not something that the film has to press pause on the action in order to develop.

[warren oates]

Not at all. For the umpteenth time, the dialogue that works as exposition of the world and Bullock's perogatives is not wasted, though it does come with a cost that eventually becomes part of a deficit.

Not sure what you mean by this. You'll have to say more about this cost and any ways in which it might have been avoided. Are you acknowledging that it's necessary and yet inherently problematic? If so, it doesn't seem easily fixable and the only solutions would really be to not make the movie or to make a different movie.

It's the stuff that you agree is surplus that is the problem, and Alien didn't indulge in it, no matter how many characters it added to the mix. I don't want Clooney out of the picture. I want him to be a better written character, with more realistic, less bloated interactions with Bullock. I want character and emotion to be something that comes through action, not something that the film has to press pause on the action in order to develop.

This is sort of an agreeable abstraction, but it's hard to see what it means with respect to the film. If you excise the Ghost Clooney, there's hardly a pause at all. The rest of Clooney's chatter takes place in the midst of character defining action and, especially once things get hairy, most of it is in the service of calming himself and his colleague, and passing some time in the void of space that might otherwise turn terrifying. If that's not some solid character writing, then I guess I don't know what is.

It also doesn't really feel like you've thought through why it is Bullock's a relative rookie, not from within verisimilitude of the narrative, but outside of that, in terms of the filmmakers' conception of the experience as a whole. If Gravity were about two veteran Clooney types lost in space, they'd have little need to talk so much, and there would be almost no need to explain the situation so clearly. It would be more like watching an Our Man duo, almost silently taking care of business. But think about that for a second and why it works so well in All Is Lost, where even if we don't always know exactly what Our Man is doing from moment to moment, his problem is pretty clear. If Bullock were more experienced, if there were less need to explain things, if she herself were on more even footing with Clooney's trouble-shooting ability, then the audience could well be shut out of the narrative.

[FerdinandGriffon]

You'll have to say more about this cost and any ways in which it might have been avoided.

The exposition is there to support the action, the raison d'être of what is supposed to be an action film par excellence. (If this is meant to be just another story of one woman rising above her past and circumstances against all odds, then call me a fool for having this discussion.) When there's too much exposition, in too many different areas of the narrative, than it bogs down the film. I don't know how many more ways I can find to put it.

If Gravity were about two veteran Clooney types lost in space...

I never suggested this. And I never suggested that the filmmakers didn't have reasons for writing the film the way they did. I suggested that they overlooked how several scenes affected the larger shape of the picture and that they failed to rise above cliche and cheap sentiment. These aren't occasional missteps, they're a crucial part of a pattern that the film intentionally establishes: threat of catastrophe followed by reaction followed by reflection. The film cycles through this pattern too often, and with too many glaring failures in the reflection stage, to retain structural or emotional integrity. If a filmmaker tacks on a phony happy ending, it's easy as a viewer to separate that from what came before. But if there are 10 climaxes in the movie, ten little endings, and they're all botched, then it's hard to remove them from the experience.

[warren oates]

You'll have to say more about this cost and any ways in which it might have been avoided.

The exposition is there to support the action, the raison d'être of what is supposed to be an action film par excellence. (If this is meant to be just another story of one woman rising above her past and circumstances against all odds, then call me a fool for having this discussion.) When there's too much exposition, in too many different areas of the narrative, than it bogs down the film. I don't know how many more ways I can find to put it.

You could be specific about the too much. So far you've just cited unnecessary character backstory, which I was presold on doing away with. But you haven't really been at all specific about how the film could cut out lots of other exposition without becoming avant garde or unintelligible.

These aren't occasional missteps, they're a crucial part of a pattern that the film intentionally establishes: threat of catastrophe followed by reaction followed by reflection.

But that's broad enough that you could have a problem with any thriller at all from The Terminator to our mutual friend A Man Escaped. It's fair to say that Gravity, for you, does not do this well. But weird to blame the film for doing it in the first place.

[FerdinandGriffon]

But that's broad enough that you could have a problem with any thriller at all from The Terminator to our mutual friend A Man Escaped. It's fair to say that Gravity, for you, does not do this well. But weird to blame the film for doing it in the first place.

What? I'm not saying that this pattern is the problem, I'm saying that the failures of the moments of reflection as such are.

[warren oates]

Got it. Still, if you were to scalpel out the kid backstory and the Ghost Clooney convo, it's hard for me to pinpoint other important yet majorly botched moments of reflection. And there remains the question of all the rest of that pesky unnecessary exposition that needs to be cut out (like: what is it?).

[FerdinandGriffon]

Spoiler

(cutting the Ghost Clooney and other sentimental Clooney interactions, embryonic floating, lotsa Bullock muttering to herself, final struggle/birth underwater, backstory)

These are all intertwined and beget each other.

Spoiler

I.E. Clooney has to have lots of cute interactions with Bullock, so that she can relax around him, so that she can tell him about her kid, so that it can be a big deal and they can have along talk as he slips away into nothingness, so that she can talk to him when he's not there, so that he can come back as a ghost/dream, so that she can float there in space like a child, so that she can be reborn in the final scene, etc.

And none of them are crucial for the good exposition, or for the very real, intimate, human terror and emotion of an individual lost in space.

[warren oates]

Well, the muttering to herself, the whole birth imagery of the ending, I feel like you could easily make separate cases for the independent viability of those moments. Same with the cuteness factor of Clooney's interactions. It works just as well, maybe even better, if he never comes back, for the reasons I've gone into above.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Well, the muttering to herself, the whole birth imagery of the ending, I feel like you could easily make separate cases for the independent viability of those moments. Same with the cuteness factor of Clooney's interactions. It works just as well, maybe even better, if he never comes back, for the reasons I've gone into above.

Agreed.

[Zot!]

Speed 3: Gravity

[flyonthewall2983]

WB releasing a "Diamond Luxe Version" in February, including a Dolby Atmos mix and the "Silent Space Version".

[mfunk9786]

"Diamond Luxe"? Give me a fucking break

[domino harvey]

But not in a 3-D version? Because they're saving that for the next rerelease? And the silent version was supposed to be on the initial Blu-ray, booooo to holding onto it for a double-dip

[flyonthewall2983]

What's the draw of a silent version exactly? Do WB not know of mute buttons?

[willoneill]

What's the draw of a silent version exactly? Do WB not know of mute buttons?

Well no ... the Silent version is just the score turned off, I believe, but the dialogue and various sound effects are still in place. Unless I'm mistaken?

[flyonthewall2983]

If it's supposed to be true to how it would sound in space it would be completely quiet, no?

[willoneill]

If it's supposed to be true to how it would sound in space it would be completely quiet, no?

Maybe the sound effects are gone too. However, the dialogue would all still be there because it's all relayed through the comms systems, even in the silence of space. But I don't know, and I'm not double-dripping, just to eliminate a score I actually really like.

Where's Neil deGrasse Tyson when you need him?

[flyonthewall2983]

The Dolby Atmos mix is more interesting to me. I haven't bought this yet, so I'll probably get this. I don't mind if the 3D version isn't on there, I can't imagine seeing it on even the biggest HDTV match up with the experience I had in the theater.

[tenia]

I've read the Silent Version really only is the score being turned off. The sound effects and the dialogues remains in the mix.

[manicsounds]

Agreed that it's interesting to have a "Silent Space" version, but this is one of those films I wish had an "Isolated Score" track in full lossless audio, like what Universal did with the US disc of "Oblivion".

[PfR73]

If it's supposed to be true to how it would sound in space it would be completely quiet, no?

Maybe the sound effects are gone too. However, the dialogue would all still be there because it's all relayed through the comms systems, even in the silence of space. But I don't know, and I'm not double-dripping, just to eliminate a score I actually really like.

Where's Neil deGrasse Tyson when you need him?

Sound effects should still be present in the oxygenated environments of the space stations.