A human body, spent of every drop of energy, willing itself past the point of expiration to survival. Clawing at the wet sand to drag itself out of a murky, certain death. Such is the last shot of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, a film hailed in 2013 for its extensive and groundbreaking production, that chronicles Sandra Bullock’s struggle to return to Earth following the destruction of her spacecraft (and multiple space stations). This scene, with a few possible contenders, was probably my favorite of the whole movie. Funnily enough, one of my favorite critics called it “laughable.” Not sure what to make of that one, maybe I’m just a sucker for primordial sentimentality after all. It probably doesn’t help my case that my second-favorite scene was the one that captures Bullock in a similar moment of biology-defying exhaustion, resting suspended in zero-G made to resemble an ultrasound image of something unborn. These musings predicate my case for Gravity as a good movie (maybe even a great one), to be expounded on further in the next section.

The case for Gravity as a good movie (maybe even a great one)

There have been a handful of great survival movies in the fairly recent past, including others that also take place in space. They have all succeeded in varying degrees to capture the human drive to not die, even if that drive is at times sullied by a less-than-righteous secondary motive. I mean sure, we all wanted Fitzgerald to die, but you could make the argument that Hugh Glass wouldn’t have gotten it done had his own son not been made a vehicle for revenge. But what comes through in the best moments of all these films (and others where survival is not the primary focus) is the raw, instinctual, guttural way in which some frames capture those most human, most driven moments. In a certain way, space makes that very easy. It’s the most unforgiving environment that we as a race have attempted to domesticate. As such, it’s an easy environment from which to procure the sort of imagery I’m describing. Sandra Bullock on the beach or any number of astronauts gasping for breath as their suits run out of oxygen. It brings us back to the basest roots of our genealogy, how our distant ancestors lived their lives out of necessity instead of manufactured desperation. There’s also something beautiful about the hubris of mankind here, or some other equally as pretentious phrasing. How we feel we can domesticate the abyss, not to mention any number of things we’ve domesticated here on Earth to its (and eventually our) detriment. We’ve traveled many generations, wreaking havoc as we go, in some effort to prove we can do it some more. That’s a cynical view, but it makes my account more lyrical. So by that token, I also like how Sandra Bullock clawing at the sand is about humanity being rejected. Space has seen us, and has found us wanting. We survived a treacherous dance with something we don’t understand, and at the end of the day it was Mother Earth who welcomed Sandra back, almost scolding her with a final brush with death as she escapes the sinking pod and then strips her spacesuit. It’s a metaphorical stripping as well, whereby the human must shirk her heretical veil that made her believe she could conquer beyond her right. But, to bring it full circle, what will eventually become of this woman? Of this blasphemous personification of our will to dominate? She’ll probably jump right back on board a ship to continue her research by delving again into that vast oblivion. Or at least someone else will. 

There. Pretension complete. While none of that captured the enormously impressive feats of strength that made this film a reality, it’s worth noting that it was a spectacle to behold. Even outside of a movie theater, for which it was oh-so-obviously designed, I was stunned by the visuals almost 10 years after its release. It’s got the kind of timeless effects that you look forward to watching again at some point — at least I’ll say that for now. 

Both of these points coalesce into a third and final point, which is that Gravity does a great job of creating separation. Even among some of my favorite space movies, there are only a handful that manage to elicit the awe of what humans do when they launch themselves up there. Just how mind-boggling it is that we’ve done that, and that we’ve managed to do it with even a modicum of success. For all of its other faults and virtues, Gravity creates that separation between Earth and space well. Like another masterclass of the genre, it visualizes and, more importantly, gets you to feel how fucking crazy it is that a human being can go into a rocket, travel thousands of miles into literally nothing, and then come back again. To grasp a fraction of what that feels like, to me, should be considered an enduring success.

OK, we’ve established a case for why Gravity is a good (maybe even great) movie. Now for the fun part.

The case for Gravity as a bad movie

Oh my god the dialogue…Honestly, some of it would have been fun if it wasn’t just…so what it is. I get the temptation, for example, to cast one of Hollywood’s most charming A-listers as One Of Hollywood’s Most Charming A-Listers, but not if he’s supposed to be an astronaut. Hell it almost worked, too! For a second there, I was charmed by Clooney’s little “I’m a fun guy who tells stories in space” routine, but it didn’t last when he said “I know you didn’t notice how devastatingly handsome I looked” to Sandra Bullock after rescuing her from a horrifying death in the middle of nothing. What an insane line to write in that particular moment, if you’re going to even put it in at all. But oh, Sandra Bullock was not spared her own share of this tomfoolery. After all, what better way to capture the enormity of her many death-defying acrobatics than to say something definitely not trite and straight out of Marvel lore like “I hate space”? Or when there’s an alarm in her escape pod and, in a moment of frustration as she tries to gather her thoughts, she exclaims “Shut up!” Oh my god…She’s just like me when my alarm goes off in the morning!!! So relatable. Finally, what about when she goes “cloudy with a chance of debris”? Jesus. 

Moving on, but while we’re on the subject of Sandra Bullock’s character, why was there a need to give her some tragic backstory? Not only did it seem like something conjured midway through screenwriting to give her somber countenance some backbone, but it elicited just about zero emotion from me, the viewer. That’s not to say that the subject of a child dying isn’t tragic in its own right, of course, but it was injected so forcefully and clumsily that for a second I rethought my flu vaccination. The writers could have just as easily said nothing at all, and I likely would have found her more compelling without a halfhearted sob story of a background. If my first section holds any sway, the movie isn’t even about her anyway. She’s a vessel for our hubris, remember??

My last major critique is perhaps my greatest, though I haven’t decided yet. In a last-ditch effort to get to the Tiangong space station which, if you’ll remember, is rapidly hurtling toward Earth, she uses a fucking fire extinguisher to launch herself onto the remaining escape pod. Now, to be fair, I am no physicist. But in my layman’s estimation, it seems a mite optimistic to think that a human being propelled by a fire extinguisher could aim and fire herself accurately onto a de-orbiting space station escape pod. Maybe that’s just me. Now as far as space movies go, or even our further umbrella genre of survival movies, this is certainly not the worst offense of its kind. As a matter of fact it’s probably pretty damn low on that list. The issue with this particular example of fantasy is that it completely broke the spell for me. Up to that point, I had been (mostly) hypnotized by the magic of the visuals and immersion of the sets. Now, watching this completely asinine scene of something we can barely do with the comfort of gravity behind us, my wonderment was reduced to an unconscious bout of eyerolling. The crystalline beauty that Alfonso Cuarón had so meticulously crafted for me was shattered. And that, my friends, was the biggest crime of all.

The final verdict on Gravity, as a movie

As I sit here, contemplating how to render my final judgment of this film, I think of Tantalus. I had gotten so close to tasting the sweet fruit of Gravity unhindered, but the branch recoiled at the last second, teasing me with ill-begotten Clooney grins and the foamy blight of a poorly placed fire extinguisher. I felt much like Sandra Bullock desperately grasping for the relief of Earth’s embrace, except that I, at the last second, couldn’t get that dad-blasted spacesuit off. Or maybe I couldn’t get out of the escape pod with water rushing in? I forget how many times she almost died in the last 5 minutes. But oh, in that last frame, they had me again, if only for an instant. And fuck if I don’t just love a space movie.