Gravity: A Critique

!!POSSIBLE SPOILIERS!!

Quentin Tarantino gave an interview while promoting Django Unchained where he discussed how Westerns reflect the different cultural eras and decades in which they were produced. While the themes of cowboys, the frontier, law and order are often explored, there is also a subtext that delivers a cultural commentary. After viewing Gravity, I'm wondering if the same can be said for the Sci-Fi genre.

Gravity is visual stunning and that is well covered in countless other reviews. The acting and story are okay, at best. But what's most curious are the references to survivalism, evolution, spirituality, and humanity's relationship to technology. While most Sci-fi space flicks are filled with action and fantasy, Gravity takes a more careful humanistic approach. One can't help to recall Stanely Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Alfonso Cuaron even seems to reference the film in a few scenes.

Kubrick paints technology and our relationship to it in a different light that Cuaron. This is probably attributed to the Cold War and the Space Race itself. Technology is cast almost as a supreme being with  HAL 9000. In 2001, tools and technology have enabled our evolution from the Prehistoric Age through the Space Age. Kubrick does raise some concerns about our dependence on technology without giving a direct opinion.

Cuaron's vision of technology is entirely different. We watch computer after computer, and device after device fail for Kowalski and Stone. The clean sexiness of Kubrick's spaceships are replaced by broken down, cluttered and abandoned relics of a very recent past. While some spiritual symbolism has given a few religious groups the idea that Gravity is an outright denouncement of technology's false promises, the themes of survivalism and evolution counter that interpretation. Rather, Gravity is a critique of our current technological adolescence that both Carl Sagan and Gene Roddenberry have referenced. How do we move forward? Is that something that we can control? How do we compensate for our lack of control? How does technology make us more or less human? Unfortunately, I don't believe that these themes were fully developed in the film for concerns that it would alienate wider audiences. Considering the climate through which Hollywood films seem to be made, we are probably lucky that any subtext was allowed to survive into the final cut. (Which also lead me to thinking, Kubrick probably never would have been allowed to make 2001: A Space Odyssey in today's world. Not without more action and more noteworthy lead actors.)

I'm interested to check out Her next. Spike Jonze gave an interview back in the fall that caught my ear referencing some of the same themes of Gravity. I've also read reviews claiming that it is 'the most important Sci-Fi film' since 2001: A Space Odyssey. Our relationship to technology is changing. It's nice to see some directors taking the time to critique it.