Movie Analysis (Part 6): “Gravity”
This week, I’m going through the script for the movie Gravity, excerpting every scene that touches on its primary ‘small’ story: Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) dealing with her grief related to the death of her young daughter. I laid out my rationale for this exercise in Part 1 of the series:
I’m not suggesting the small story in Gravity is wholly responsible for its ginormous box office success. What I am saying is this:
* At least some of the positive BWOM (By Word Of Mouth) about this movie derived from the audience’s emotional connection with a mother who has lost her child and is forced to cope with her grief under remarkable circumstances.
* If the filmmakers themselves looked at the movie as a metaphor for the Protagonist dealing with her personal issues, then it makes sense for us to think about the story that way as well.
* No spectacle movie can be considered to be great unless it has a compelling small story at work in it.
Here is what I propose: Over the next week, I’m going to go through the script for Gravity and strip out every single scene that references the movie’s small story. In that process, I am going to focus on three dynamics:
1. The overall arc of that subplot moving from Beginning to End.
2. How the metaphor of outer space services the psychological nature of this subplot.
3. Stone’s metamorphosis as she is forced to grapple with her grief.
More generally, I am hoping each of us will come away with an appreciation for the importance of the machinations of a story’s Internal World balanced against the entertainment value of all the action in its External World.
SPOILER ALERT: If you have not seen the movie and don’t wish to know what happens, do not click on More. If you do want to track the series, I’ll see you below the fold.
Plot Summary: A medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after a catastrophe destroys their shuttle and leaves them adrift in orbit.
Background: Dr. Ryan Stone is a biomedical engineer on her first Space Shuttle mission. She is accompanied by Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) and Shariff (voiced by Phaldut Sharma).
Here’s where we left off yesterday per the IMDB Plot Summary:
As she returns to full consciousness, Kowalski is gone, part of a hallucinatory dream. Stone restores the flow of oxygen and uses the landing thrusters to navigate towards Tiangong. With no fuel to slow or to dock the Soyuz with the Chinese station, Stone ejects herself from the Soyuz via explosive decompression. She uses the remaining pressure in the fire extinguisher as a makeshift thruster to push herself towards Tiangong, which has also been abandoned. She enters the Tiangong space station and makes her way through its interior to the Shenzhou capsule.
Here is today’s excerpt from the shooting script:
ANOTHER ANGLERyan stops on a graphic in the instructions, displaying what to
do next.RYAN: All right. Okay. (as if to Matt) Hey, Matt?Ryan reaches toward the control panel.RYAN: (as if to Matt) Since I had to listen to endless hours of your
storytelling this week, I need for you to do me a favor.Ryan presses another button.HIGH ANGLE - RYANcontinues pressing buttons according to what the instructions tell
her.RYAN: (as if to Matt) You are gonna see a little girl with brown hair,
very messy, lots of knots. She doesn’t like to brush it. That’s okay.
Her name is Sarah. Can you please tell her that Mama found her red shoe?
She was so worried about that shoe, Matt. But it was just right under
the bed.Ryan presses more buttons. The monitor changes to display new graphics
in Russian.RYAN: (as if to Matt) Give her a...HIGH ANGLE - RYANcontinues pressing buttons whilst perusing the instructions.RYAN: (as if to Matt) ... big hug and a big kiss for me, and tell her
that Mama misses her. You tell her that she is my... (voice wavers)
... angel. And she makes me so proud. So, so proud.ANOTHER ANGLERyan presses several buttons. She manually sets the current altitude at
3 meters. A counter on the monitor changes to read: “000 003.0”RYAN: (as if to Matt) And you...HIGH ANGLE - RYAN continues to press buttons.RYAN: (as if to Matt) ... tell her that I’m not quitting. You tell her
that I love her, Matt. You tell her that I love her... (voice wavers)
... so much.Ryan looks up.RYAN: (as if to Matt) Can you do that for me? Roger that. (to herself)
Here we go.Ryan looks back at the control panel in front of her. She presses a
button.
At this point, Ryan has made a choice. And so the dialogue in this scene is a kind of merging, both theological — ‘praying’ to Matt who is presumably in ‘heaven’ along with her daughter — and psychological — Matt representing the Higher Knowledge she’s gained, realizing that she does want to live. I’m not quitting.
Two things I find quite interesting about this dialogue:
* This is the first time we learn her daughter’s name: Sarah. It’s an interesting choice of names. In the Bible, Sarah was the wife of Abraham, the name deriving from ancient Hebrew. Whether intentional or not, it’s in keeping with some of the religious themes in the story.
* The red shoe. Sarah’s favorite pair. On the morning Ryan drove her daughter to school, they couldn’t find her red shoes. I imagine Ryan was in a hurry, like most parents are busily attempting to move their children along. Of all the things Ryan would ask Matt to convey to Sarah, it’s that Ryan found her lose red shoe. My gut tells me this is the physical object onto which Ryan projected her guilt. Her little girl died not knowing the fate of her favorite pair of shoes. There is something so specific about that, so mundane yet so familial. Now that Ryan has made her decision to try to live, she is able to confront the issue of the lost red shoe and in asking Matt to pass along that information to Sarah, bring that issue to closure.
Here is that scene from the movie:
This represents the penultimate stage of Ryan’s metamorphosis. She has transformed from an individual seeking to quite the voices in her mind, seeking silence in outer space, to someone giving expression to her deepest fears and confronting her shadow.
Now comes the Final Struggle in the realm of the External World. She is ready to move on with her life… if she can survive reentry to Earth.
How about you? What are your interpretations of what has transpired up to this point in the story? Do you feel it’s effective? Or not? If not, how would you have approached this ‘small’ story? Or maybe you have a different ‘small’ story you think would have worked better.
A reminder: As far as I’m concerned, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to an individual’s experience of a story, so if you liked or disliked Gravity, feel free to wade into the discussion. At the end of the day, I’m hoping this series will underscore the importance of stories having a compelling inner life.
Hope to see you in comments!
For Part 1 of this series, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
Part 4, here.
Part 5, here.
Tomorrow we continue with our analysis of Gravity.
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