Jonathan Melikidse at 2014-05-31 07:59:35:

Agree with the film's "small story" or not, I think it is great to see them take a big budget film about an astronaut stuck in space and turn it into a metaphorical journey about a person who has given up on life and trying to move on. Her choices are to let fate take its course and slowly drift away or fight for another chance at life. This is shown visually when Ryan makes it to the first space station and floats, exhausted, like a fetus in womb. Her "growth" from this point forward is finalized after she makes the decision to fight for her life (be re-born with another chance to live) when she emerges from water onto dry land. I know this was perhaps too much for some, but, without doing flashbacks and risking taking us out of the distance of space I think the small story provided depth that otherwise wasn't there. It would be interesting to see the film with cuts to Ryan's memories ans see what plays out better. When I hear the phrase "show don't tell," I wonder if this is what was meant. Ryan told us of her loss. But, on the other hand, the film showed us how she overcame her loss and gained her will to live by finding a way back home to earth.

Scott at 2014-05-31 12:23:53:

Jonathan, I'm glad you mentioned the "fetus" image, which you can see here. All of part of the visual iconography related to Ryan's metamorphosis. I've read several interviews with Alphonso Cuaron and he said they had to resist notes from Warner Bros. who were uncomfortable with the way they were telling the 'small story.' Some of the notes: Cut to Houston, back and forth; show flashbacks with Ryan and her daughter; give Ryan a boyfriend in mission control in Houston. Cuaron insisted on staying in space, staying with Ryan's character. Yes, it did force them to 'tell' the small story, not 'show' it which cuts against conventional cinematic wisdom, but staying WITH Ryan increases the sense of tension and claustrophobia of her experience and by extension ours. Moreover one could argue there's SO MUCH going on visually in the movie anyhow, an almost overwhelming amount of stuff, that the narrative NEEDS some down time where characters just talk to provide balance. Finally by NOT providing specific images relative to Ryan's daughter, indeed, not even naming her until quite late in the story, that creates a more generalized version of the story which opens it up for anyone in the audience who is a parent to grab onto and identify with: What if that happened to MY child? By all objective standards -- box office, film critics, awards -- Gravity is a success. Again, some individuals have problems with it or even hate it as Louis CK did. And as noted up front, that is entirely fine. I don't think it's a perfect movie nor the greatest movie ever. But for a big, mainstream popcorn movie, many of which seem to pay hardly any attention to the 'small story' or do a piss poor job of handling it, at least the Cuarons were intentional about connecting the metaphorical aspects of the 'big story' to the 'small story,' they constructed a coherent 'small story' that had a beginning, middle and end, the 'small story' created a point of universal audience identification (loss of a child, grief), and both big and small story worked with and supported each other.