Uh, that the point of gravity isn’t the realism of the orbital physics.
-Tom
True. How about if I put it this way: did you enjoy watching Her? Because I did. And lord knows, I’ve spent a lot of my life dealing with operating systems.
-Tom
I’m looking for someone to argue the opposite, because I agree with you wholeheartedly.
In particular, if you view Gravity’s finale in strictly literal terms, you’re just scratching the surface. A woman overcomes not just the void of space but the void in her soul, plummets in fire to the Earth like the phoenix, plunges into the waters and crawls out like life’s beginnings staggering out of the primordial muck…if you watch that and all you can think about is how she should’ve burned up on re-entry, well, I feel kinda bad for you, actually. :)
Well, yeah, but the problem isn’t with interpreting it literally, it’s that Cuaron is basically all caps shouting this is a metaphor at the audience the whole goddamn time: “LOOK, SHE’S LETTING GO! NOT JUST OF CLOONEY, BUT OF HER CHILD!” . I love Gravity, but he lays it on so thick it hurts.
At the end of Gravity, when I saw it in the theaters, I was laughing a little bit when she went under and had to escape from drowning. I half expected swarms of jellyfish debris to now impede her from “getting over there” one last time.
I don’t disagree with the meaning of the ending, but I do disagree with the amount of bruising one suffers about the junk area from having such ham-fisted metaphors curb-stomped onto me. Her re-entry, particularly the wide shots on top and behind of the debris, were beautiful and striking and I’m sure the burning phoenix imagery may have entered someone’s mind during the creation of that sequence… but I feel like that’s us interpreting a bad poem very generously to give its importance more weight than it deserves. I don’t think the interpretation is wrong, but it feels a bit like deeply exploring the subtext of a pop song.
I know what you mean. When she started swimming through the seaweed I was thinking “No! You’re going to get tangled up and drown!”
I don’t disagree with the meaning of the ending, but I do disagree with the amount of bruising one suffers about the junk area from having such ham-fisted metaphors curb-stomped onto me. Her re-entry, particularly the wide shots on top and behind of the debris, were beautiful and striking and I’m sure the burning phoenix imagery may have entered someone’s mind during the creation of that sequence… but I feel like that’s us interpreting a bad poem very generously to give its importance more weight than it deserves.
I really don’t understand this. First you’re saying that the metaphor is too obvious, but then you conclude that it’s too tenuous?!?
I don’t think the interpretation is wrong, but it feels a bit like deeply exploring the subtext of a pop song.
When, for a variety of reasons, it seems that large swaths of people have difficulty reading and appreciating a literary work, maybe exploring the subtext of a pop song isn’t all that bad a thing to do to reach them.
the amount of bruising one suffers about the junk area from having such ham-fisted metaphors curb-stomped onto me.
This is one crazy metaphor itself.
I read somewhere (may have been earlier in this thread) that the original script had her fighting to get out from under the parachute, but they (wisely) elected to leave that aside.
No, I didn’t mean it was too tenuous, but I feel like dissecting a bad poem gives the poem more weight than it deserves just by spending time on it. The ending of Gravity it pretty obvious in its coming out of the water reborn stuff (although I wasn’t thinking about a phoenix during reentry, I just thought they had some beautiful visuals going on at that moment).
For me personally, even though I feel like I got a lot of the subtext of Gravity, its subtext is not that interesting to me in the form it takes within this specific film. I guess by jumping into this thread to write the things I’m writing, I’m doing the very thing I’m not sure is worth the energy to do so I’ll just stop.
If that had actually happened, my slight chuckle would have been full-blown guffaw in the theater. I imagine a lot of people would have given me dirty looks (like when I started laughing at the end of A.I. and the bawling woman next to me shot me a glance that implied murder).
As per the title card, the point of Gravity is that we live in a very thin margin. Humanity exists on a thin slice of the planet between the sea and sky. Sandra Bullock having to endure outer space and underwater makes that point more explicit. I can imagine it would be funny if you’re just watching it for a “this happened and then that happened” level, because it’s just one more thing she has to survive. But to me, it’s an important part of the movie’s point. There’s stuff that kills us above and below. Leaving that comfort zone is a great peril, and a great adventure, and an important stage in the decision to be alive.
Of course, I’m sure the imagery of her crawling out of the water wasn’t lost on you, given how heavy handed you feel the movie is. :) But as far as re-birth imagery, I loved the movie’s representation of it by connecting to the larger scientific scale of evolution. As well as the more immediate personal level with that awesome shot of her curled up in the fetal position inside the Chinese capsule, complete with a random hose standing in as an umbilical cord. Really subime stuff.
Again, I think it’s an amazing movie for the poetry Cuaron managed.
-Tom
All that Tom said, plus: Sandra Bullock looking pretty tight in her undies. Yo!
I think visual poetry is allowed to be a bit more obvious than written poetry, too, because if it doesn’t look like what it’s trying to portray, it’s really not saying anything at all, is it?
Maybe that’s just my love of Gravity talking, but it sounds reasonable to me.
And look – the yellow sticker has a character on it that looks like a BIRTH CANAL.
I read somewhere (may have been earlier in this thread) that the original script had her fighting to get out from under the parachute, but they (wisely) elected to leave that aside.
Yeah, but they still shot it as if that was what was going to happen (maybe they did actually shoot a version with her getting trapped and just used some of the footage), with the shadow of the parachute looming over and threatening to engulf her, so it ended up coming across as a weird set-up-without-a-payoff.
IT’S BIRTH CANAL 1.
I CAME FROM BIRTH CANAL 1.
Ham-fisted or sublime!?
I think visual poetry is allowed to be a bit more obvious than written poetry, too, because if it doesn’t look like what it’s trying to portray, it’s really not saying anything at all, is it?
Huh? So the whole of non-representational visual art has nothing to say?
Technically yes, if you’re gonna word it as non-representational instead of non-visual representation. At least in the Nelson Goodman tradition of aesthetic philosophy.
But what I mean is best represented by something stupid like this t-shirt’s visual pun. It’s beating you over the head with it, and that works as a visual. (Much like the uterus, phoenix, & birth imagery in Gravity.)
You’d need a bit more subtlety to get away with linguistic puns that audacious, but as a visual, it works.
Now what I didn’t mean is that visual mediums are incapable of subtler poetic forms. Compare this to Beasts of the Southern Wild, say, and you’ll see something far more subtle. But it’s a false comparison, in a way, because Beasts of the Southern Wild is making its poetry with words & rhythms. The one visual part, the beasts themselves, is similarly in your face. Because, like the silly fish tank pun, if it didn’t show you the actual beasts (or at least hint at them out the corner of the frame like a horror movie), you wouldn’t even recognize it for what it is.
It’s not like visual imagery can’t be subtle in its own way, but the degree to which it can push that is limited when compared with words.
Edit: I mean I know you were just making a quick jab, but there’s a serious answer.
It’s beating you over the head with it, and that works as a visual.
Let’s just say opinions differ. I’ve got to say I’m not a huge fan of the visual pun (or whatever you want to call it) approach you see so much on Threadless and other shirt design sites. 9 times out of 10 they’re the visual equivalent of “Get it?” But even by those standards, that one’s pretty lame. I mean, it doesn’t do anything even vaguely aesthetically interesting with it, like, say this one.
It’s not like visual imagery can’t be subtle in its own way, but the degree to which it can push that is limited when compared with words.
I really, fundamentally disagree with this. Film’s still a relatively young medium (though obviously visual art has been around longer than the written word) but even so it’s built up a pretty substantial repertoire of metaphorical language, ranging from the so widely accepted that we don’t even think about it (eg how different cuts indicate different changes in place and time) to the idiosyncratic (say, the thematic use of colour in a Krystof Kieslowski or a Zhang Yimou film).