Disclaimer: What follows are specific plot details and spoilers of “Gravity.”  The review contains spoilers regarding the movie.  Do not read this review if you have not watched the movie yet, and you wish to in the future. 

The most remarkable thing about “Gravity,” the new film from director Alfonso Cuarón, is how quiet it is for long stretches of its running time.  Minutes go by where the only sounds you hear are radio chatter between its stranded astronauts and Houston and perhaps a few ominous notes of the taut score by Steven Price.

In a moviemaking industry that has spent the past decade cranking up volume and amplifying the bombast, this is a blockbuster that is not afraid to let silence speak for itself.  Perhaps “Gravity” is a film of sensations rather than a dream house of ideas, but it is one that is so finely tuned that it is hard to forget.

“Gravity” is a simple tale made extraordinary by Cuarón’s skill as a filmmaker as well as a performance from Sandra Bullock, which may be the best she has turned out in her career.  It is a film about a fight for survival far, far from civilization in an air crash or shipwreck in the void of space.  “Gravity” is a film that speaks to the most primal emotions: grief, the will to survive, and the fear, loneliness and wonder of life.

Veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and rookie Ryan Stone (Bullock) are stranded in space when their shuttle is destroyed and crew are killed by a swirl of floating debris.  They conceive a desperate plan to reach the International Space Station again before the field of debris comes into their orbit or they run out of oxygen.

Cuarón’s approach to this tale is barebones to the point of minimalism, making for a simplistic 90 minutes of film time.  There’s no footage of fretting family members or of a bold rescue plan coming together on earth.  We spend the film entirely in the company of the two astronauts, the vast desolation of space, and until communications are cut off, Ed Harris’ voice as the ground controller.

There is no single precipice in the film: the scenes combine the highest and lowest point of the characters’ spatial posturing.  They are constantly falling or climbing, climbing and falling.  It is difficult to breathe while watching the movie, and almost impossible to not experience one’s own body as if it is stranded in outer space, without anything to hold onto, to root one to any solid earth.

Cuarón has not made a feature since his 2007 science-fiction cult-classic “Children of Men,” but “Gravity” is likely to be more influential than that film.  Even with such visual marvels as “Pacific Rim,” you will not see a better-looking big budget film this year.  It’s that rare film that is enriched by the subtle deepening of every frame with 3D.

“Gravity” is full of long takes as impressive as the ones in “Children of Men.”  This is a film that slowly draws every breath out of your body with its sustained tension.  The special effects, especially those used to bring long takes in zero gravity to life, are cutting edge and place you at the edge of space, impenetrable blackness one direction and the warm, inviting embrace of the Earth in the other.

Clooney turns in a characteristic performance as the competent Kowalski, a laidback professional who spins homely yarns in a warm drawl as he faces the blackness of space and inevitable death.  It’s not a role that taxes him; it’s simply one that asks him to do what he does best.  “Gravity” really belongs to Bullock, however, giving her one of the best female lead roles of the year.

Angelina Jolie and Natalie Portman, who both rejected the part, must be kicking themselves.  But it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Bullock bringing the same mixture of warmth and grit to the part.  In long stretches of the film, she has no one to play off beside herself.  Often, she’s working against corny dialogue.  It is thanks to Bullock that Stone’s journey from depression to determination is as compelling as the effects are marvelous.

Many contemporary blockbuster films function simply to activate the senses—to enact and embody the “thrill aesthetic” through its lavish special effects and immersive 3D technology.

There is much criticism of this as a cinematic form.  Some argue that complex characterization and serious storytelling are marginalized favor of the kinetic ride.  Thrill, however, is an expansive concept, and the senses are not necessarily crude or divisible in the way.  Spectacle can create the conditions for profound elation, as “Gravity” clearly does.

Gravity releases the viewer into an unknown or unknowable void and in so doing asks (or rather compels) them to consider what it is that makes one human, social, and connected.  It makes us realize something about ourselves.  That we are all simply drifting throughout life, attempting to grab hold onto something tangible, just like Stone is drifting throughout space.

Lost in space, caught floating and fleeing in the pure realm of the senses, we find out who we truly are and can be.