G R A V I T Y

‘Gravity’ has only two star performers (Bullock and Clooney – what a combination!) to hold audience in suspense for 90 minutes with bated breath.

Yet it is the simplest movie revolving around two NASA astronauts floating in orbit, and functioning as best they can.  They are the product of education as much as of specialised and rigorous training in science, technology and human endurance in punishing conditions.

Maybe because it’s set in cosmic space, it gives us no capacity to compare or comment. For real or not, ‘Gravity’ offers the closest look at what it is like in outer space. It’s almost as though we have floated in the outer void to see the action.

As any movie that inspires self-reflection, Gravity has weight (not a pun).

Bullock’s character, Dr Ryan Stone, is extremely reclusive single mum mourning the lost of her young daughter.  She copes by immersing herself in work and driving home, and becomes more comfortable with solitude than social conversations. 

Matt (Clooney’s character): What do you like about being up here?

Ryan: The silence...I can get used to it.

Matt: What do you listen to when you’re (in the car)?

Ryan: I listen to any radio station as long as I don’t talk.

When you are drifting in a world of your own,

hearing another human voice makes a big difference. 

Like it or not, Matt’s voice becomes an external frame of reference that draws her out of her mental seclusion.  I especially like it when Matt said to Ryan:

 “You have to learn to let go…to survive.”

- to let him go so that she could live.

"You can shut down everything in the system...no one can get to you, hurt you or disturb you. (But) You are going to start and get a life!!"

- to go on when she begins to shut down the oxygen supply.

Now, she is reaching out to someone for help.

In a moment of facing her mortality, Ryan cried out, "Can you pray for me? I have never prayed in my life...nobody ever thought me how.”

It’s not hard for anyone to draw life analogies from their exchanges, and even from the plot.

When you are falling, find a visual focus 
to keep your sanity...

even if it’s just your hands.

If you have been drifting too long, 

learning to walk again is a big step.
  

It’s easy to get lost in space.
You are moving but going nowhere.