The opening scene of Gravity (2013) is reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece albeit lacking a grandiose symphonic entrance celebrating humankind's greatest achievement. Instead, Alfonso Cuarón's panning of Mother Earth takes place in the tranquility of empty space-- a tranquility disrupted by the orbital oncoming of space junk. Thus insinuating that mankind has fallen victim to his very own creation, a Frankensteinish turn of events, as astronauts battle not only the elements but also the debris accumulated in five decades of space exploration; a first of many visual metaphors that fill this existential void of Aristotelian connotations. As most of the Earth had been populated (and polluted) space remained virgin territory, a blank canvas where the naming of a new experience still preceded the actual experience. Until we started launching Soyuz(es) and Apollos into orbital decay, a short-lived endeavor that lost public approval with the 1986 Challenger tragedy, but the damage was already done. Our carbon footprints keep roaming in circles in a sort of Nietzchean eternal recurrence. And it is precisely against this backdrop that the human condition, embodied by Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), is put to the test in extreme conditions, lacking oxygen but never short of our ancestral spirit for survival. Dr. Stone's is born again once she manages to reach a Soyuz module, a relic of the Cold War, a tiny space capsule that resembles the womb, an imagery reinforced when the astronaut comes to full rest in fetal position. In space as in dreams everything is possible, Ryan Stone is no longer a female American astronaut but a mere human being donning the space suit of the former nemesis, not stripped away as in Homeric battle but sought after in her quest for survival. An odyssey in which even an unintelligible language becomes familiar, as the bark of a dog and a baby crying remind us of our shared humanity, as we re-enter Earth's atmosphere, landing on soft water, and clinging to wet sand as we pick ourselves up, as we learn to walk again.
