Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Gravity’ Turns 10. Has it Aged Well?

Here’s Venice boss Alberto Barbera on Alfonso Cuarón‘s “Gravity” and its premiere at the 2013 Venice Film Festival:

It was my second year, with Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. Warner offered it to us, they didn’t really believe in it. But it was magnificent. We opened with it. Months later it won him an Oscar [for best director].

That’s exactly what happened, not to mention seven Oscar wins, massive critical acclaim and $732 million at the worldwide box-office. The film was a phenomenon that established Cuarón, the master behind “Children of Men,” as a major directing voice.

“Gravity” turns 10 years old next week and with it comes an assortment of anniversary pieces, including one that has Cuarón speaking with Empire about his career-changing film.

It turns out that “Gravity” was written on a whim. Cuarón and his son, Jonas, were working on an “un-produced French-language arthouse film” only to learn that it wasn’t going to happen. They had only until the end of that month to get a script together that they could sell.

I was broke and I really needed to put together something in order to pretty much survive. I said, ‘I’m feeling, in terms of my life, like I’m falling into the void.’ And that’s where we devised the image of an astronaut, just spinning into the void, into darkness. At this point it was just abstract ideas — [the character] didn’t have a gender or anything. But by the end of that night, maybe around midnight, we already had our first outline of the whole film.

Three weeks later they had the whole first draft, but Cuarón also admits that he wasn’t sure if the film would turn out good: “We were spending a lot of money not knowing if it was going to make any sense. I’m telling you, it was not until pretty much we finished it that we realised, ‘Oh yeah, this works.’ But it could not have worked.”

Now, 10 years later, “Gravity,” with its invitation to immerse the viewer into space, via state-of-the-art 3D, hasn’t really been talked about that much in terms of its placement in cinematic history.

In our massive critics poll, in regards to the best films of the 2010s, “Gravity” only garnered four votes and finished in 64th place. Back in 2013, Cuarón‘s film was treated as the second coming of sci-fi cinema. In 2023, it barely gets talked about.

I decided to rewatch “Gravity” last night and, much to my surprise, it still works wonderfully well, even if you watch it at home. The film feels both enormous and intimate. The opening shot lasts over 12 minutes, the mid-movie twist is darkly rendered, but what struck me most was the eerie feeling of total and utter hopeless isolation that Cuarón conveys here.

Has it lost some of its edge due not being seen on a big screen? I guess, but the film feels incredibly minimalist and works perfectly fine on a 60 inch screen. It’s fairly suspenseful, thrilling and technically accomplished. Not close to the masterpiece many critics had hinted at 10 years ago, but, with checked expectations, it’s hard not to be taken by this film.