The Ties that Bind

Is it only a British trait to be so sniffy about success? The collective cynical groan that follows any BAFTAs and Oscars where a film sweeps the boards is indicative of the ‘what’s so special about you?’ attitude that pervades our culture. Just look at the tabloids, if you don’t believe me. Just who does she think she is? (Yes, it’s more often a she, in my experience). So, when it came to the film, Gravity, my expectations had been tempered by the luke warm shrugs and grudging recognitions of its technical prowess. 

The latter is, by any measure, gob-smackingly stunning. As it begins, the startling visual clarity contrasts with the soft murmuring of comm transmissions. The dazzling light refracted off my grubby glasses and I had to pause the DVD to polish my specs. I was geared for a ‘slow’ story, but I spent 87 mins in a frenzy of heart-thudding, palm-sweating tension as Dr Ryan Stones’ rapid, oxygen-starved breaths filled my ears. I recalled the gut-pulsing suspense I’d felt witnessing Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling stalking a murderer through the dim corridors of his lair in Silence of the Lambs. Technical wizardry aside, I was in Sandra Bullock’s shoes - those moon boots - and I too was filled with the horrific sense of helplessness as she free-wheeled through space. A lone woman desperately, clumsily, facing off peril.

I have resisted reading any articles about the film. I’m reluctant to let any smart critic’s eloquent sentences colour the immediate and exhilarating reaction I experienced from watching this film. Through its simplicity, the allegorical nature of this story is easy to appreciate on many levels. Dr Stone’s determination to make it back to earth from space leads to a re-entry sequence that brings to mind how particles of life landing on a planet with ‘just right’  levels of oxygen, water and sunlight led to our existence. The rebirth of a individual woman, breaking free from the womb of a capsule, swimming through the gushing water and gasping for breath on solid ground before she struggles to walk upright parallels the original birth of mankind.

It is a man, Alfonso Cuarón, who tells this woman’s story. He possesses an unsettling capacity for plumbing the depths of the female psyche. Just think of Y Tu Mama Tambien and the haunting conclusion to an otherwise hi-jinks sex comedy. Its heroine is elevated from a confused and impulsive cougar to a woman whose legacy to her erstwhile lovers is like Artemis’ revenge on Acteon. Neither goddess or woman gives pleasures freely and both the eager voyeur and ardent lovers feel the painful bite of their own reality. 

As with any story, we bring our own stuff to our reading of it. And this is where Gravity struck me deeply. Before the birth of my daughter, life felt an unsubstantial thing. Existence felt like sleeping under a duvet when I really wanted the reassuring weight of a feather quilt. The image that often came to me was of floating around space untethered to earth just waiting for the strike of space debris or the pull of a force that would send me skittering off into nowhere. It was a terrifying feeling. I wonder if that’s what Kundera meant by the Unbearable Lightness of Being, but I’ve always been too distracted by the actress in that bowler hat to find out. 

This weightless feeling ended with the pull of new life that was my daughter. I now felt I was a conduit for whatever higher power endows this planet with life. I was tethered. I was safe. So, what greater horror lies in wait for a parent than to lose this tether, as Dr Stone lost her daughter in the story of Gravity. How many parents would say of their children, ‘He/she is my whole world’ ? Just what do you do when that world is gone? With the tether broken, the choice remains: float off into space or re-enter the atmosphere by any means possible.

It’s a choice that some people face on a daily basis, whether prompted by a tragedy or not: the drunks, the drug addicts, the depressives. But when we survive a tragedy, when we are left numbly standing at the graveside or witnessing the ghastly aftermath of an earthquake or tsunami, we are forced to find that particle of will to survive, the atom that still quivers in the vast emptiness of our grief, and guide it back to a place where it can be nurtured and grow.