Caution1: Spoiler alert!
Caution2: I wrote this post 4 years ago and reconstitute it at 2017
- plot
Gravity's main character, Ryan Stone (Sandra Bloc), lost his child and became a space craftsman to forget her sadness. She came up into space to repair the Hubble telescope. During the repairing of the Hubble telescope, Russia shoot down its spy satellite. The debris created by the satellite struck a space shuttle which Dr. Stone boarded. Dr. Stone entered the ISS(Interational Space Station), where Russians even left off, the help and sacrifice of Matt Kowalsky (George Cloony). Dr. Stone tried to enter the Chinese space station to get a escape shuttle, but she was desperate to the fact that the movement process was too harsh. She tries to give up her life here, but she awakend by some reasons and arrived at the Chinese space station with the will of life. Finally, she arrived on Earth safely.
Dr. Ryan stone lost the will of life after losing her child. She came up to the Space to forget the life on the Earth. Matt asked what is the favorite part of Space, then she ansered “silence”. There are no living things and matters which are the condition that can make organism alive in Space. That is, the space can be represented to ‘death’, furthermore, and ‘the gong (공, 空)’ – the gong is the Buddhist concept, and stands for the state of nothing-. Therefore, she came up to the space because she lost the will of life.
After the accident, Dr. Stone fell into panic. Matt made her calm down and headed for ISS with Dr. Stone. However, Matt had no choice sacrificed his life to save her. She felt sadness about that. She entered the ISS which was burning. She boarded a return vessel. But the fuel in the vessel was run out as soon as she boarded. In the act of requesting for rescue through radio communications, she communicated with a person called Aningaaq. Although their languages were different, they sympathized each other. After the communication, she lost the hope that she can come back to the home, and decided to kill herself. At then, in illusion, Matt came into the vessel and instruct the way of going the Chinese space shuttle. Dr. stone arrive the Chinese space. Finally, she found the escape vessel and escaped to the Earth.
The ultimate goal of this film is to say, “human will for the life itself”. The Space was the background to emphasize the theme of the movie “Gravity” in terms of the fact that the Space is not the space for surviving. ‘Gravity’ is a very existential movie. In the movie, the thing which inspired the will of life of Dr. Stone was not hopeful things, such as religions but her itself.
Let’s interpret it through Camus’ way. -Albert Camus (1913~1960) is the French writer, philosopher- Because of the death of her son, Dr. Stone observed the absurdity. She came up to the Space to disregard the absurdity. Camus said that one can deal with absurdity in three ways, suicide, hope, rebellion. In terms of the fact that The Space is represented to ‘the death’ and ‘the gong (공, 空)’, the behavior of coming up to space is similar with that of killing itself. Through the struggle of escaping from the Space to the Earth, she finally accepted the death of her son (absurdity) and started the new life of facing the absurdity. It’s time for A weak tadpole to grow up the frog.
You don’t have to interpret the movie by using Camus’ absurdity. This is just one of the many interpretations I think.
In fact, the movie “Gravity” is not the kind of the commercial film that you can see without thinking. There are no explosive action scenes like Michael Bay’s films in the movie, and the movie concentrated the main character itself rather than mutual relationship with others. However, if you feel vacuity or depression in your life, I strongly recommend this movie. –this movie made me withstand the notorious KSAT exam preparation period-
My writing skill was so poor that I could not convey the impression and meaning of the film properly. I hope the readers will feel the impression that I felt while watching "Gravity".