It is not very difficult to understand why Gravity drove so many
people mad: the film depicts with dark vigour a deeply familiar,
global and pansexual genre of nightmare – the asphyxiating grip of
disorientation– the inability to know how to navigate yourself in
the world: ''I am losing the earth under my feet'', '' I do not know
what to do with my life'', ''I am lost',' ''Someone should talk to
me on the phone now -please speak to me'', '' Darkness is swallowing
me'', ''I can't breathe'' ''Save me''. Here comes a choreography of
panic – a plotless horror-story which looks like a plotless
life-story, or else, an allegory of terror on earth – a life-script composed
out of random images and fragments of thoughts that swirl in a
reverse orbit around your mind -- when you body swirls sleepless
around itself at bed during an endless night.
The
pattern of this nightmare is very simple: A screwdriver or a spark or
a flying piece pops up suddenly and stretches the thread of your life
like a sling. In this respect, Gravity reminded me of an old Iranian
film about child who was trapped in an apartment and struggled to
find a way to get out. I was myself a child when I watched it, so I
do not remember the title of the film – but I remember very well
its (non-)plot due to its ability to re-enact the psychological
and biological havoc I was going through whenever I blundered. You do
not always need 'bad' characters to live a drama – absent- mindedness,
misfortune and lack of reflexes can easily let your life slip through
your hands and burst – with a muffled bang – in the gap. What we
call '' tragedy ''is not always produced by the moral conflict
between victims and violators – Antigone and Kreon or Cordellia
and Edmund – it is also ignited by random errors, gaffes and clumsy
shit-moments. A car crash, a tripping over the stairs, a cell that
fell from the pocket can radically change the gravity of time -- the
rhythm of your breathing --and the overall way you live in your body.
It is not
necessary to watch all that in a 3D IMAX screen in order to grasp
that vibe. It might actually be funnier (and cheaper) to download the
film and watch it on your mobile phone whilst lying on a moving swing
or a seesaw or - even better – whilst flipping upside-down on a
fairground crane. Inspired by this synaesthetic ping-pong between the
screen, the earth and our nerves, I want to explain here in what way
science fiction is haunted by what I call emotional porn – or else,
an exhibitionistic intercourse between erotic dreams and futuristic
nightmares. To put in another way, I want to speak about he
sensational encounter between an American blockbuster film and the
cultural as well as sexual sock of material misery and erotic
desolation.
The film
represents the way in which your body represents fear within a dream
– it is a representation of a representation that takes the form
of dream within a dream; one that unfolds on screen with no gabs
and delays, in a fast-pasted and spectacular way – or else – 'in
the American way' that ''fit us all''. The act of floating in space
evokes the way you move when you dream: sometimes you want to run --
but your feet refuse to wiggle - and some other times you play
backgammon with gravity – your body goes up and down – flies and
lands – as if you were the dice in the handful of an invisible
player. What is terrific in n this case is that the super-physical
powers and the bleakest version of a body-in-dream are simultaneously
combined. The heroes sail in space with the grace of a ballet dancer
or the serenity of a baby in the wet pocket of his mum -- and at the
same moment – their bodies freeze, lose their breath and get
smashed into pieces. Hyper-space re-stages and violates the sensation
of a dream-space.
Just like in a dream -- in the movie, when you grab something it changes into something else or turns into pieces.. Just like in
thriller - so in a dream - every act is interrupted by another.:
something always happens and the completion of an action is
recurrently postponed As is well-known no dream has ever ended: its
closure is always crushed by a sudden awakening - which in turn sets
in motion a new succession of idyllic and horrific scenes. The
boundaries between waking and sleeping is not fixed. The alarm, for
example, might remind you that you do not live in the world of
nightmare - but it immediately lands you in the nightmare of morning
work (or unemployment) -- alarm is simultaneously the soundtrack of
awakening and daydreaming-- a signal of resubmission to the
sleep-walking mechanics of the daily routine. It is a transitory
sound-scape, one that heralds relief and anxiety – an end and a
beginning. In the similar way, in a sci-fi thriller – hyper space
is simultaneously the setting of dream and nightmare -- it fades away
and is then re-animated all over again – even when the final act of
transition, the return to earth, is accomplished
The landing scenes mix the ecstasy of relief with the restarting of a
disaster - the bottom of the sea re-enacts the atmospheric
discontents of hyperspace (lack of oxygen , levitation and trapping).
The mainland -- the ultimate goal – opens up before the bare feet
of the protagonist - like a virgin and wild environment - a new
setting of threat and awe - equally scary and exotic with the
hypnotic landscape of the hyperspace. Sleep and waking - fire and
water - land and air – pour themselves into each other. The film
does not actually end -- we do not know what the protagonist will do
in order to survive on earth. Even more so, we do not know what the
viewer would do after leaving the movie theatre. You keep on walking
out of the cinema hall knowing that the earth is a field of forces
that you cannot control -- a spider-web of actions and reactions that
spreads around you as if you were a stoned fly.
The most
impressively three-dimensional effect of this film is fear: Here
comes a movie without a plot - a moving image with no story. It
inspires a sense of awe as sudden, deep and bizarre as the one you felt when confronted
with the tablecloths purchased by your grandma in a street-fair (visualize hunting scenes in the wild forest) or children's crafted art on mourning ('' my mum grew butterfly-wings and flew away
from the hospital'') or the dream-graphic diary of a psychotic – or
a 'fool for Christ' - who experiences the fall as flight and vice
versa. Above all, therefore this is modernized biography of martyrdom
-- a new form of hagiography – one that re-stages human suffering in
hyper-pace – re-adapting for the screen the psycho-psychogeography
of the desert. This the desert of the Bible but also the desert of
the American western: the main male character listens to country
music, talks like as cowboy and rides through space as if he was
riding a horse.
In moments of utter despair, the camera focuses on traditional
religious objects: a small Russian-Byzantize Hagiography (in the
Russian spacecraft ) and a Buddha (in the Chinese). In the following
scenes, the hagiography turns into a portraiture of love. The
astronaut who was thought dead returns unexpectedly out of the
window and prevents the protagonist from suicide. The astronaut is
George Clooney – who is essentially playing himself. He evokes the
cool star who descends from the screen: here the spacecraft's window
works brilliantly as a metaphor for the cinematic or televisual
screen. Radio frequencies -- received from earth – lull
the protagonist. The miraculous arrrival of the 'man' gives the
answer the problem. Then the stoned protagonist/spectator wakes up
and realizes that her savior was a hallucination. This is a self-
reflective comment in disguise. Without blocking the suspense -
cinema reflects on cinema by dramatizing the illusory substance of
its stardom and the gender ''of its (dis-)illusioned
believers. Here comes a dream speaks about a dream – or else, a
dream that teaches you how to escape from a nightmare.
The
message-that-saves is spelled by the imaginary lover - the star , the
saint of the screen, the new god. In deep contrast with the Biblical
story Adam and Eve though, his figure is made out of the bowels of
the ' weak sex ', meaning, out of the protagonist's erotic and
fearful impulses. She saves herself through her own immersion into
hallucination -- she speaks (to her own mind) through the
'spectacular' male body of her fantasies. In this way, Hollywood
seems to situate itself against the religious imagery of post -
communist countries (Russia and China). Semi - ironically and semi -
dramatically – in accordance with the ambivalent face expressions of Clooney – the screen announces: I am the erotic opium of my
viewers - and indeed, I am a dream that can be seen with the eyes
wide open.
At the
same time, the material culture of the film playfully winks at the
erotic face of the present -- the current interface culture of
eroticism – the cyber-galactic windows of the Internet, Facebook
and Whisper: the new erotic Bibles of the poor. We are trapped in
our rooms like in space capsules – we paint the illusory faces of
our lovers through whispers, pictures and radio frequencies. We build
erotic profiles out of our transmedia hallucinations. And when all
seems to be lost, we allow them to ride our mind as if they were
space-cowboys. Then we wake up - give a slap on our rump -- and run
without saddle in the 'desert of the real.'
