Movie Notes: Blue Jasmine and Gravity

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.