Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space

I hate space,” admits Dr. Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock in Alfonso Cuaron’s new sci-fi film, Gravity, and 30 minutes into the movie, we know what she means.

To be fair, Dr. Jones is having a bad day. Her repair mission on a space station with co-astronauts Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Shariff (Paul Sharma) has just been interrupted by flying debris from a blasted Soviet satellite; the collision has caused her to drift away into space, untethered and quickly losing oxygen.

To her rescue comes Kowalski, a veteran astronaut who never loses his cool, his ability to tell stories (prefaced by “I’ve got a bad feeling about this mission; it reminds me of the time…”), or his tendency to play country music inside his spacesuit. Kowalski re-tethers himself to Dr. Stone, and they try to fulfill the new objective of the mission: namely, finding a way back to Earth.

Gravity does for the idea of space exploration what Jaws did for swimming back in 1975: it makes you never want to set foot in space. Ever. Never mind signing up for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flights someday; after seeing Gravity, you’ll never again want to leave precious terra firma.

Space has been presented many ways before in cinema: as boring (the slow-paced Waltz of spacecraft in 2001; as horrifying (the abode of monsters in Ridley Scott’s Alien); and as a technical problem to be solved by humans (Apollo 13). But few movies have made space seem so real. Cuaron’s space is breathtaking, and capable of evoking a terrible human loneliness. Like Moby-Dick, where the ocean is a symbol of the terrifying infinite (among other things), the director’s vision of space is beautiful, hypnotic, and capable of swallowing you into its nothingness. Or smacking you with space debris. (Both bad options.)

Actually, more bad things happen within Gravity’s 91 minutes than one might expect on a normal NASA mission. If astronauts in training exercises experienced all the difficulties these astronauts do during flight simulation, they’d probably all wash out. That’s the scary part of Gravity — much like being trapped at sea with only a Great White Shark for company. And you know there’s no way for E.T. to phone home for help.

Bullock really delivers as Dr. Ryan Stone (“My dad wanted a boy,” she says, explaining her male first name). It’s her first space mission, and she’s nervous as hell, but Kowalski tries to calm her nerves by having her take a look around. “You can’t beat the view,” he says, and we, too, take in the beauty of Earth’s curvature below. Emotionally, Stone has few things tethering her back to Earth, and that’s the theme that the script by Cuaron and his son Jonas try to explore: the way people become strangers to their own planet. It’s a simple story, yet expertly told: Dr. Stone must find a way to reconnect with her own life and a way back to solid ground (one possible meaning of the movie’s title). Bullock is sheer Oscar bait here, and she occupies nearly every moment of the film: Cuaron has arranged an expert series of single, unbroken shots that present the experience largely from Stone’s point of view — often breathing the same air inside her space helmet. The camerawork is dazzling, but even in 2D, it can be dizzying: another reason some of us may want to skip future space travel when it becomes available to the masses.

In fact, watching Gravity reminded me a lot of being inside one of those NASA motion-simulator rides at Florida’s Epcot Center: the ones where a new catastrophe pops up every few moments, and you’re thrown and lurched around in your seat until you press the right buttons to correct the problem. In general, I can’t stand motion-simulator rides — they make me want to hurl — but watching Gravity, at least I knew it was happening to somebody else, not me, on the screen.

The cinematography and camerawork by Emmanuel Lubezki is seamless and Oscar-worthy, but it’s Cuaron’s images of space that will blow your mind, much as 2001 did for audiences back in 1968 — whether it’s the rim of Earth as the sun rises over the Ganges; the aurora borealis (actually solar wind entering the atmosphere) lighting up the Arctic Circle; the sight of Bullock returning to her space capsule and frantically breathing in precious oxygen before slipping into a floating fetal position; or the shot of a single tear escaping her eye and floating onscreen, reflecting the inside of her space cabin. Who says there’s no poetry in space?

If Bullock encapsulates the tough yet vulnerable character we’ve known her to be ever since she found herself aboard an out-of-control city bus in Speed, Clooney is Buzz Lightyear: especially with the helmet off, his haircut and even his voice convey the in-control, never-say-die NASA male. But there’s a weary pragmatism about him, too — not the conventional hero archetype you might expect.

Both Bullock and Clooney are comforting presences in space, no question about it. Cuaron’s movie went through loads of casting choices (among them Robert Downey Jr. instead of Clooney; reportedly Angelina Jolie and Scarlett Johansson both turned down the Bullock role). It’s hard to imagine the movie working as well without them.

The script draws on something astronauts have actually reported during their space journeys: a feeling of renewed awe at their unique place in the universe, and a new respect for the planet and how precious it is to us. In short, a spiritual experience. This awareness is a big part of what makes Gravity the best movie we’ve seen so far this year.