Movie Notes: Blue
Jasmine and Gravity
Just saw Gravity at the I-Max at the Seattle Center. I came away thinking this is what computer
graphics should be used for rather than building bigger and better
mega-battlemonsters. The filmmakers did
for space what Ang Lee did for the ocean in Life
of Pi: they showed us what these
vast places are like, only more so.
But it wasn’t deep space in Gravity.
Instead it was really really high up.
The earth is there to locate everything, and as Matt drifts away he
finds solace in the spectacle beneath him.
What a filmmaker has yet to
show us is the horror of Nothing, no earth or heavenly body as a reference,
only your space-suited arms and feet and blackness, I was going to say in all
directions, but of course there would be no directions.
I’m not sure how much the
experience was enhanced by the I-Max’s 3-D.
I was most aware of it when things like combs and Bullock’s tears
drifted from foreground to close foreground.
The film is a lesson in how
long sustained shots, one over ten minutes I think I read, create a convincing reality. We don’t experience our lives in camera breaks
to different distances and positions.
I don’t seem to be much of a Woody Allen
fan. I’ve probably missed his best
films. I’ve seen Match Point and Blue Jasmine,
and felt both were well-acted but contrived and predictable. The moment when the sister’s ex meets Jasmine
and her new guy on the street and spills the beans was a feeble piece of
storytelling. I like Cate Blanchett a lot. But I felt I was watching an accomplished actress
Acting. In Gravity I was watching a woman trying to cope with a series of
frightening crises. My Oscar goes to
Sandra, not Cate this year.
There was one weak moment in Gravity, when Bullock almost misses the
Chinese space lab and grabs it at the last possible opportunity. Standard filmmaking suspense here. But otherwise a splendid film tracking a
convincing flow of events.
Oh, was anyone reminded of Das Boot? Both present a frightening series of crises
in claustrophobic metal cannisters as characters attempt to perform mechanical
procedures while being pummelled by destructive outside forces.
