By Some movies land in cinemas and slip out of the fire exits without anyone noticing them, only to become cherished favourites. It’s a Wonderful Life, Donnie Darko, The Shawshank Redemption: all box office disappointments which burrowed their way into enough brains to become classics. It’s a lovely thing, and these movies support the idea that good art will out and nothing good is ever lost.
But there’s a much, much bigger pile of movies which made a sizeable splash at the time of release before disappearing completely. There has been no critical reevaluation of middling animation Over the Hedge. Do you ever think about Jurassic World: Dominion? Or any number of superhero spin-offs. Sometimes cultural cachet is harder to achieve than a healthy box office.
It has now been ten years since Alfonso Cuaron’s orbital disaster movie Gravity, and it looks like a prime contender to slip into that second category. Gravity was the eighth biggest box office hit of 2013, grossing about $723 million, and won seven of 10 Oscars it was nominated for in 2014, including a Best Director gong for Cuaron. It has a classic disaster movie plot: newbie astronaut Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is left floating in space when debris separates her from the Space Shuttle, and she races to Earth before her oxygen runs out – with a couple of extra flair points. It follows Stone’s fight for survival in real time over its 91 minutes, and, most importantly, it was the 3D movie which most made you feel like 3D might not be a total gimmick.
Obviously it did turn out to be a flash in the pan this time too, but back in 2013 there was a sense of breathlessness. Gravity’s 3D effects – combined with Cuaron’s whizzy, gyroscopic camera moves, which really made the most of the whole thing – was welcomed as the kind of epochal moment for 3D which The Jazz Singer had been for sound.
Even people who’d actually been to space were wowed. “I was so extravagantly impressed by the portrayal of the reality of zero gravity,” said Buzz Aldrin at the time. “Going through the space station was done just the way that I've seen people do it in reality.” (There was grumbling from some quarters about whether some bungee cords could really bungee quite as much as they bungee’d in the film.)
The real reason it all worked, though, was nothing to do with realism or tech. It worked because nobody does “woman just about holding it together in unlikely scenario” like Sandra Bullock. She has made an art of it since Speed and somehow managed to pull off the ludicrous Bird Box with that skill. Gravity is another masterclass of the genre. Stone is panicky and overwhelmed, but has a core of pure iron. Her never-say-die-in-an-explosive-decompression attitude is so intense that she’s operating at the level of Laurie Strode at the climax of Halloween for a good 70 minutes or so. And the score! Eerie, lilting, gorgeous.
At the same time, Gravity marked the end of a couple of things. George Clooney will be in a massive film again at some point, but having shifted his attention to directing recently – his The Boys in the Boat is set for release this winter – Gravity might stand as the last massive popcorn flick of Clooney’s career. And though we didn’t know it then, it was the absolute peak of 3D and mainstream cinema along with Avatar.
And yet you never really hear anyone mention Gravity anymore. It was really big, then there was some backlash to the critical praise. And then it seemed like people never fought its corner again. Perhaps it is the whole 3D thing, and people feeling it was such a cinema-specific movie that you couldn’t really get the same buzz at home. Maybe, just maybe, outside of awards seasons hype, its slightly rote character moves and plot points became too obvious. There are no big quotes or big moments that you think of when you think of Gravity, because, by and large, nobody talks about Gravity at all. It’s lost in orbit, hoping Earth will get back in touch soon.
But Gravity deserves better than to float around among movie jetsam, only reappearing in a nostalgic fever on anniversary lists. It’s a taut, ingeniously constructed survival thriller with two wildly entertaining performances: Bullock is at her best, and Clooney does his schmoozy wise guy thing to the nth degree. Perhaps it was a mistake to herald Gravity as a giant leap for cinema. Perhaps, a little like Stone, we were just supposed to go along for the ride.
