GRAVITY in IMAX-3D. (My Love Letter to this experience).

You may probably never become an astronaut in your life. But the least you can do, is watch Gravity in IMAX 3D and feel the near astronaut experience. But, if your parents watch Gravity, they will never allow you to become an astronaut in the first place. Because, that is what this movie is about. It captures the worst possible nightmares of an astronaut, the hazards of working in space. It’s not a good idea to be working in a place which has no life, which has utter silence as the only companion, where there is maximum risk with minimal possibilities of rescue, where no one can hear your cries for help and be stuck in there in a space station in a line of work which has very thin margin for error. Yet the director Alfonso Cuaron strikes a chord with his beautified vision of the space job, hence giving us the most memorable imagery and breath-taking set pieces we have ever seen in a space film. This is the masterpiece of all the space films so far since the Stanley Kubricks Space Odessey 2001 in 1967.

Set in today's age with today's technology thankfully, Gravity is a survival-thriller-horror story of two astronauts on a usual space mission, who have escaped a major space disaster of their space shuttle at 337 miles above earth with no one to help. But there are no villains here, like aliens. It has a plausible disaster and believable physics. But the sheer experience of watching those disastrous events on a giant IMAX screen will only suspend your imagination in disbelief. It is nothing but 127 hours + Life of Pie set in space, but it’s more visceral. It has the story’s proximity with a single character like in 127 hours, surrounded by the infinite visual beauty like in Life of Pie. It is simply amazing that Alfonso Cuaron created everything in Gravity out of a $100 million budget and just 2 on-screen actors (plus other voice actors for mission control of earth). But the entire movie is populated by the amazing performances of Sandra Bullock (as Medical Engineer Ryan Stone) and George Clooney (as Lt. Matt Kowalski), their conversations, jokes, back stories and most importantly their emotions. Both have a perfect chemistry and display such mutual importance for each, you wonder if they have ever dated in real life. Sandra Bullock gives a solid performance. Imagine this, you are a 50 year old woman, and you are left hanging in rigs and robots twisting your body up and down like a toy to simulate floating in Zero Gravity, yet still you are never to let that strain show up on your face. Sandra Bullock hits bull’s-eye in every scene despite all the physical strain around her, and successfully carries the entire burden of the story on her shoulders. Hats-off  to her composure. She is the one-woman army of this movie.

But what really stole my eye is what Alfonso did with his $100 million budget. I left the theatre wondering about these following questions, and so will most of the audience, especially the movie-makers and VFX geeks:

How did he do that opening shot in a single take for 17-minutes? What a beautiful choreography and execution of that opening shot? How did that camera went floating around with characters and eves-dropping at their conversations for 17 minutes without a cut? How did the camera’s point-of- view shift from outside the body to inside helmet in a single take without cut, that too with continuous spinning? Did they really shoot in space? If not, which element is CG, which element is real? How did they manage to do Zero gravity? How were the actors and objects shown floating in space so flawlessly? How was their complicated trajectory designed? How did they manage to show that ferocious speeds of debris? There is no sound in space, but still, i was able to feel the impact of those collisions. How? How long did they plan this thing? what a precision ? What an execution? What an accuracy? Is it how it is in space for real?  What a vision? what a movie.!! What a seamless marriage of acting, direction, imagination, technology, science and spectacle !!

James Cameron was right, and I too must confess that this is the most beautiful space photography ever done in any space movie. Couple that with the amazing IMAX 3D, it gives you an out-of-the earth experience. Advantage of IMAX 3D is, you get to see those beautiful but minute details like, that sunrise on earth as seen from space, that line of Day & night moving towards west, the Google earth-like-POV of the towns along the river-Nile of Egypt dimming their lights as the day approaches, those beautiful patterns of clouds and hurricanes etc. On one side you feel the colourful vastness of earth and on the other side you feel the lifeless emptiness of Space, an experience only reserved for space travellers is now available for the movie-goers in those IMAX screens. The Dark space and the bright earth serve as metaphors for helplessness and hope, a beautiful theme evident in the movie. The camera moves (floats) with such a slow and steady fluidity that you have all the time on this earth to observe those beautiful images and little details, scan every corner of the giant IMAX screen and still be able to follow the dialogue and absorb their underlying themes like a sponge. The Audience go floating through-out this movie, they are into a virtual Zero-G environment in their sub-conscious already. That image of the earth's gloriously vast curvature shimmering in the sunshine might as well be your desktop's wall-paper.

Gravity is filled with loads and loads of thrills. There is no sound in space, so how to achieve that without murdering the simple physics? Firstly, the camera never shakes or blurs like in your typical action movie. It is steady, and hence allows you completely feel the terror of the space collision by multiplying the impact with an intelligent background score and the amazingly précised reactions of the actors. The scenes of colliding, tugging and pulling of objects and bodies in Zero gravity environment are so beautifully choreographed, that all the lessons of your physics textbooks will be flashing in your mind. A fan or a geek of the Physics subject will be delighted to see all those Newton’s laws come to life for the first time, and put to practical  use right in front of his eyes. The geography geeks watching this movie will be busy spotting India, Srilanka, Egypt and River Ganges going by the shapes of the Land-masses visible from space. Because the Camera beautifully settles down and lets the audience enjoy the 'unbeatable' view as mentioned by the George Clooney. Get ready and hold your breath, for those breath-takingly spectacular action sequences that will blow your mind and drop your jaw in the salute of Alfonso Cuaron’s vision.

On one hand you will be fascinating about floating like super-man in zero gravity. On the other hand, you will be terrified to see how the astronaut is helplessly drifting away into deep space in the same zero-gravity with nothing to stop, after being thrown away by the collision impact. Real time astronauts will be thanking their Gods after seeing what kind of situations these Characters go through in Gravity. Such is the way Alfonso captures that that terror, with his immersive camera movement and super long takes with precise choreography of these sequences; he simply sucks you into this experience. That shot where the actress is continuously spinning in zero gravity, the way the camera is spins outside the body for a while and fluidly shifts the POV to inside her space suit’s helmet, giving you an inside-out feel of that situation, is one example of his genius. You can even observe the reflection of the earth spinning upside down on the glass of that helmet. For me that is one of the best images of this movie, and there are so many of those.

When you are surrounded by a cacophony of terrible movies, when you are in a dire need of some terrific entertainment on all levels, its movies like these that come to our rescue. They pat our shoulder and make us feel safe about the future of good movies. Alfonso captures every imaginable terror of an astronaut, ranging from the fear of getting lost in the vastness of space, the lifeless loneliness that this dark space offers to the fear of getting stuck on those small space capsules alone forever. He really captures some breath-taking images, making you wonder how huge the earth is and how small and alone are we in this gigantic universe. Kudos to Alfonso Cuaron, his vision and his five years of dedication behind this movie. May his movie win Oscars in best movie, best director, best actress, best cinematography, best VFX, best sound design, Best background score and what-not?