Father + son + 4 1/2 years = zero gravity

Father + son + 4 1/2 years = zero gravity

The movie Gravity began with a "gross miscalculation", say director Alfonso Cuaron and his son and co-scriptwriter, Jonas.

The idea behind the film was simple enough: a story about two astronauts being accidentally set adrift during a spacewalk and then battling to find their way back to safety.

With this stripped-down storyline and just two characters to contend with, Cuaron thought it would take one year to make, tops. Instead, it ended up being 41/2 tortuous years as he realised the technology to film this while also "respecting the laws of physics in space" just did not exist.

So he and the crew had to invent it themselves, coming up with ground-breaking filming and lighting techniques along with other innovations to create the illusion of zero gravity for both the audience and actors.

Critics are already predicting that their efforts will win an Oscar nomination or two.

But being technological innovators was the last thing the Cuarons were thinking of when they first came up with the story.

The duo, who spoke to Life! in Beverly Hills last month, say they envisioned something that would serve as a lyrical metaphor for overcoming adversity, with the emptiness of space representing the existential hollowness of the main character.

"We had this notion of doing a film that's a roller-coaster ride - that has you on the edge of your seat from the beginning - but which, at the same time, is nothing but a projection of a deep and emotional journey," says Cuaron, the 51-year-old director behind the dystopian drama Children Of Men (2006) and the magical adventure Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (2004).

The Mexican film-maker, who is known for infusing his action blockbusters with arthouse sensibilities - including long, continuous takes and wide camera angles - was not about to cut corners when it came to realising this extended metaphor.

"The moment we decided to do a space movie, it took a lot of research," says Jonas, 32.

The production team, which included five- time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, a 49-year-old director of photography who has worked with major directors such as Terrence Malick and Martin Scorsese, consulted with astronauts and astrophysicists in order to make sure their film was as realistic as possible.

Cuaron says: "In the first wave of research, the advisers told us that a couple of things in our story were completely stupid. Or they would say, 'Come on, you would cheapen it if you did that.'"

And he and his team listened.

"It's not a documentary, but we wanted to be very respectful, within the frame of fiction, about the physics and procedures and technology of space."

Early reactions to the film from astronauts and other space experts suggest that they have succeeded. The reviews so far have been largely positive, many praising it for accurately recreating the experience of such space missions, albeit with a few quibbles about some of the more dramatic turns.

This was the result of the film-makers' attention to detail, which includes things such as the unusual light found in outer space, something that Lubezki grew rather obsessed with.

The director reveals: "He was asking the astronauts the weirdest questions about the light, because it's unlike any light on earth - it's unfiltered, whereas on earth, everywhere you go, the atmosphere refracts it.

"And on earth, you have different colours of light, while in space, there's only one continuous colour except for one minute at sunrise and one minute at sunset.

"It was very hard to replicate that light and even harder to replicate it in both the virtual reality we created and the live action." In addition, everything had to be converted to 3-D in post-production before being edited down to a compact 91 minutes.

But with all the technical wizardry, Cuaron did not want to lose sight of the story and its underlying allusions.

He tells Life! that it was a deliberate choice to make the lead character a woman and not a man "because of the themes of rebirth and nurturing and fertility in terms of that impulse of life".

He was advised, at one point, that "with a male movie star, you could put everything together a lot easier and it's the same movie".

"But we said no, it's not. For us, there was no question that it was going to be a woman."

Father and son say that there was a genuine collaboration between them on these and other creative calls, even though one might have expected Jonas, who has never worked on such a big film, to defer to his father.

Jonas is "wise and stubborn" but knows exactly how to win their arguments, Cuaron says of his child, to whom he would pitch movie ideas instead of telling him bedtime stories when the boy was growing up.

He also credits Jonas, the eldest of his three children from two marriages, for giving Gravity a fresh new energy "that isn't in any of my other films".

"He was very clear about this concept of making it tight and keeping the tension up from the get-go," says Cuaron.

"As you grow old and keep making films and people applaud and indulge you a bit, the more you think that you have important, serious things to say.

"But he kept saying no, we have to make it fun, and this reconnected me with my early love of cinema, when I went to the movies because it was fun."


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