Also, that scene when they are weighing what their dad should do with all this random advice before the second debate and then after he has his ass handed to him they are like “WHO TOLD DAD THAT?” and no one wants to take credit and I just think about that chasm, like for Mitt internally, that was what he got for trusting one of his lethal-idiot sons who Googled it up or purloined it from some Fox program and then it being the source of his failing when his sons have been his wellspring of unflappable pride…best part of the movie?

Also, Ann’s power suits and the weird part with the horse tongue!

3 moments that struck me:

1) so much constant family involvement in high-level strategic campaign conversation. Why on earth would you want all of your kids telling you what to say in your debates and stuff? Like, would a president Mitt just have all his boys gathered in the oval office arguing over what he should and shouldn’t do? SO WEIRD.

2) The amazing scene where they soliliquize about how dems don’t understand how much pressure small business owners are under…this forceful belief that the other party is completely blinkered by their subject position and circumstances, coupled with the complete obliviousness to the ways in which they might themselves have a limited understanding of any issue for similar reasons.

3) “It’s for my wife’s MS you a-hole!” I love the angry non-swear!

Thanks for sharing!!!

My friend’s theory is that the movie is about depression. In broad strokes: Sandra Bullock has suffered a trauma, but she survives and thus (like everyone else on the planet) has to just keep confronting one damn thing after another. But she’s under-prepared and ill-equipped emotionally to handle life’s (space’s) obstacles. George Clooney tries to help, as a sort of therapist or friend or partner, but she’s so out of control (literally spinning out at the beginning) that she can’t even describe to him what’s happening to her or where she is. There’s so much in the film about her not being able to communicate, not knowing if anyone can hear her or understand her. (And like a good analyst, Clooney tells her to just keep talking, no matter what.)

My friend noted that the fact that all the flight manuals are in a foreign language is akin to how understanding the brain science of mental illness or depression or analyzing the solitariness of existence doesn’t actually help you to deal with these things when you’re experiencing them. We know a lot about depression and have treatment plans and manuals, but the experience of trying to get through depression seems impossible and hopeless. Things that are supposed to help or save you (like the manual, the parachute) can be ineffective or even dangerous. And that sense of being pulled back in just when you think you’re on the right path is dramatized really literally throughout the film (especially with the parachute, but also with the debris that comes back around with every rotation of the earth, threatening and disrupting all the progress they make in the interim of each orbit).

Religion and spirituality offer potential ways to cope or interpret your existential experience. But the religious symbols in the film (the Cyrillic Jesus card and the Buddha) are only introduced after they have been abandoned by the people that they were meaningful to (the Russian and the Chinese astronauts). And the howling at the moon part! (That’s actually where my friend started to win me over with this interpretation). The plaintive loneliness and animalistic quality and futility of it. When I think about it now it seems more sadly meaningful and less annoying than when I was watching the movie.

The dead baby in heaven part of the movie really upset me (it seemed so cheap and manipulative). But Sandra Bullock does have to let go of the fantasy of being with her daughter in heaven (the way the other astronauts had to leave behind their religious icons) in order to get on with the business of saving herself and getting back to earth. She has to let that go and literally “wake up.” (There’s a parallel in there or a portrait of a different possibility with the guy who does a celebratory dance at the beginning of the film, then gets his face smashed and dies–isn’t there a shot of a family photo of his floating away or being left behind in the original ship?)

My experience of the movie when it was happening was one of disappointment (that it wasn’t about the awesomeness of space) and irritation, because I felt like the film was endorsing cliches and empty spiritual structures as the prescription for a successful self-reliant individual who triumphs over nature. Plus, I hated script. But I like my friend’s interpretation, and it makes the cliches seem more like a clever way to sneak in bigger existential ideas that were different than the cynical neoliberal ones that I had, like you, sensed and bristled at. In his interpretation, the movie doesn’t endorse anything as “working” to help anyone triumph. Bullock makes it back to earth (and the terrible music with the “ahhhhhs” (the first human voices in the musical score) rises to let us know she’s rejoined the community of humankind). In this reading the film isn’t a classic struggle between the individual and nature so much as a struggle within oneself with alienation and loneliness.

It’s true about the lack of jingoism, but in a way that just supports my whole neoliberal reading even more–because in a purely market-governed world (which is what real neoliberals are shooting for) there are no longer national or cultural boundaries. There can’t be, if capital is to flow without any barriers. So there’s this weird ambivalence, where on the one hand it’s refreshing to imagine a world without nationalism, but on the other hand the transformation of every person into an isolated individual unit, unattached to culture or tradition, is also sort of dark. Anyway I think my reading of the film is getting pretty far afield.

One disagreement though: the score, which was awesome and minimal for perhaps the first third of the movie, became SO brutally manipulative in the second half and especially during the climax! I agree during the beginning of the film the score RULED. But then it became really heavy-handed “triumph climax” music, esp when she was falling to earth. Like two different scores!

I can see the religious overtone here but I don’t think there is a compelling argument that faith is what is pulling here through. It’s a secular hallucination that gives her hope and renews her will to live. I think this humanistic.

I agree with some of the neoliberalism individualism stuff, but I don’t find it nearly as pernicious as most other Hollywood crap. I think this is a step in a good direction.

And I for one thought that space looked awesome in the 3D. The atmosphere felt subtle and realistic, no need to make it overly majestic. It was the simple wonder of orbit and I think despite the whole movie being about fear of the frontier it might just inspire a new generation of space cadets hungry for low gravity adventure (better for stupid young kids than Three Kings, desert army adventures at least).

And that leads me back to where I began; that she survived not so much as “overcame” space. Speaking to the film’s spirituality, I think it posed a more “take from it what you will” kind of stance than pushing any concrete notion of the spiritual. Space, in my opinion, doesn’t need to be dressed up. I didn’t need space to be “portrayed” as awe-inspiring to be awe-inspired by it. All of the religious points (praying, the Buddha statue, etc.) stood to me as human constructions; through Stone’s reactions (“no one ever taught me how to pray” [someone’s gotta “reveal” it you, prayer/religion doesn’t just exist like space does]), it was evident (in my interpretation, at least) that religion is just something we humans have developed to help us cope with a world not tailored to meet our needs. I’m not religious at all, let me make clear (it’s outlived its use in my opinion), but there are a lot of people who are and I don’t think Cuaron was going to avoid touching upon the issue (Christian messianic themes were evident in Children of Men as well). To sum it all up (I know I’m sort of repeating myself here, haha!), space is a terrifying place that we’re lucky to survive in and should we find ourselves faced with horrible circumstances, we need to find a way to deal with them; that’s evolution. Sometimes we do (Stone) and when that happens we can feel a little more alive.

I still loved watching Gravity, because I couldn’t stop thinking about actually being in space. I’d never felt that physically connected to space in a space movie. Even though it was all robot-cartoon-graphics-space, it suspended my disbelief in a surprising, awesome, and meaningful way. I guess I treated it more like a motion ride than a piece of art.

I loved the sound design so much, but hated the score twice as much. FEEL ME?

PS – You’re super wrong about Pacific Rim!