If you were looking to define irony, I have a sobering suggestion:Sandra Bullock,one of the most affably likable actors we’ve ever seen, hasone of the most atrociously unlikable Oscar winson her resume.The Blind Sidehas gotten so many backyard beatdowns as an embarrassingly dated attempt at faux racial progressivism, and her finally winning the Oscar by donning a cheap blonde wig and a barely passable Southern accent is the rotten cherry on top. I don’t want to live in a world where Sandra Bullock doesn’t have an Oscar, but it simply shouldn’t have been forThe Blind Side.It should have been forGravity,the most challenging and meticulous work of her career.
What is ‘Gravity’ About?
Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) is on her first big mission updating the hardware for the Hubble Space Telescope, with veteran commanding astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) overseeing her work. It’s a routine maintenance job, even for a newbie like Stone, who’s out there after just six months of training and preparation, which is a relatively short warmup time for an astronaut. She’s going to regret such a short turnaround, asshe and Kowalski must abort the missionwhen clouds of debris from a nearby destroyed satellite come hurtling towards the Telescope. The duo is left stranded alone in space, having lost communication with Mission Control (Ed Harris),with only each other’s ingenuity and wherewithal to save them from total oblivion. Over a decade later,Gravityremainsa masterpiece of technical innovation, andAlfonso Cuáron’s Oscar-winning direction turns a simple disaster story into a parable about spiritual rebirth. The film puts all of its thematic weight on Bullock’s shoulders, and she gives a performance that’s all the more impressive for how effortless it seems, given the myriad of technological complications she had to endure.
Sandra Bullock’s Performance Is An Important Moment In Acting History
Knowing that he likes to shoot scenes withhis signature long takes,Cuáron chose to create all-digital environments while keeping the actors' faces real. This meant he and genius cinematographerEmmanuel Lubezkihad to devise a systemwhere, for spacesuit scenes, the actors would be in a nine-foot box with the inside covered in LED screens that would change the lighting in real time, while the actors stayed perfectly still. For scenes when Stone is out of her space suit, they used industrial robots (the kind meant for building cars) that held Bullock and moved her around in the air while she was hitting specific marks with the control of a dancer and still delivering an emotional performance free from artifice.
To shoot her scenes, Bullock would lock herself into a rig inside the box that she chose to stay in for up to 10 hours at a time, along with regular wires that would dip and swing her about as needed. None of this is to take credit away from her performance, but to instead highlight that she had to work in tandem with all of these different external factors that were relatively groundbreaking for 2013. In an age where actors openly complain about feeling stranded on their own ina sea of green screenand have their entire performances fully replaced with CGI,Sandra Bullock’s dogged performance stands as a watershed moment in the fusion between old-school practicality and way-of-the-future technological wizardry. This would have made far more of a statement than what the Academy chose that year.
Ryan Stone Encapsulates Sandra Bullock’s Career Beautifully
The Academy ultimately awardedCate Blanchettthe Best Actress Oscar forBlue Jasmine, which is no doubt an incredible performance, but one that’s all too comfortably the type of performance that’s quite literally screaming for an award. It lacksthe element of surprise and evolution that comes with seeing Sandra Bullock in a role like Ryan Stone, as she’d never done a huge special effects-dependent film where she was the focal point before. What’s most impressive is how she maintains that intangible quality of weightlessness and frazzled focus while still painting a full portrait despite the minimal backstory information we’re given, that of a grieving woman who has sealed herself in the loneliness of space as a form of coping with tragedy. She gains a lot of mileage out of how she injects the role with that same spunky and determined attitude that’s been a staple of hers sincethe days ofSpeed, except now it’s been weathered down with the unspeakable pain of loss and dejection. If Bullock had to win an Oscar that felt like a legacy win,Gravitywould have been a better choice thanThe Blind Sidespecifically because, despite the film’s genre trappings and CGI hurdles,Ryan Stone is a role that reflects her established presence in film history far greater than anything she does inThe Blind Side.
Despite all the CGI hurdles and sci-fi genre trappings, Bullock’s performance offers much of what you’d think Academy voters would love: a fully fleshed-out character arc that plays to the indomitable human spirit, speeches that unload pent-up pain that plays out entirely in her face, a sense of seeing a veteran actor do something we’ve never seen before. I dare you to watch Sandra Bullock howl in appreciation to the sound of a dog over an intercom or find a moment of much-needed peace in a symbolic womb and tell me this performance isn’t Oscar-worthy.
Gravityis available to rent on VOD services.
Two astronauts work together to survive after an accident leaves them stranded in space.
