Worst problem with Gravity: its artificiality

But when it comes to the movie's depiction of our little jewel in the universe; just say 'I don't like it' and that would be fine, too. Instead, you justify your opinion with 'I've seen photos!' 'I draw, so I know these things'. It just makes you sound like, well, some guy who got to use 'dithyrambic' in a sentence.

OK. Alright. Now I can see where this is going. It's one of these matches-until-we-have-a-winner. I want no part of this. I was not expecting you to go overboard with this exchange, but there you did. Can't you accept that someone might diverge in opinion from you and leave things at that, without trying personal attacks? I am really fascinated at how deadpan serious you seem to get with what is meant to be a friendly and fun place to be. I don't make a career out of watching people expressing ideas that go against mine. I read your comment and decided I would try one last time to explain myself – but not to convince you in particular. I try to write for as many people as possible. I can’t say as much about what you have been doing, seriously....

Obviously, you liked what you saw (and I mean it in its primary sense) in Gravity, and it must be comforting to be among a majority of people with that same opinion. I did not criticize the visual aspect of Gravity out on a whim. I still stand by what I wrote: Gravity does not look realistic enough to make reality dispensable - and here I mean the original or the analogic instead of the purely digital. I think I mentioned that what acted as a trigger for me to start this thread was watching with much interest the Blu-Ray supplements on the making of Gravity. That is, how Cuarón made such a big fuss of how close to the real thing he tried to be and how much he thinks he did, and how short of this he fell, alas. Of course, I knew I was sailing against the wind with this opinion of mine: the chorus goes like “Gravity” succeeded in recreating an actual walk in space and duplicating how things and people look and behave under zero-G. Forget that Sandra Bullock's hair does not move at all (must be a NASA gel), but that her tears have zero capillary pressure and get suspended at once, floating like any other liquid inside the cabin... (Tears should stick even more strongly to the skin or eyelids under zero G due to capillary tension, that force which, for example, is responsible for the surface of water in a narrow tube to be concave). Just pointing out 2 of the most obvious scientific incongruities (am I being too pedantic again? sorry, I’m such a show-off :)) in that movie. But hey! I did not write the rules of physics, so don't shoot me if you don't like the fact that one of Gravity's most annoying problems is that a lot of people accept what they have been told, i.e. that it is visually perfect and that it perfectly (or so closely) emulates a catastrophic space mission using the most advanced CGI ever deployed so far in the history of cinema. See? I wrote it, and I do think it. Gravity achieved greatness with the means they ended up using because Cuarón bet that by developing new approaches and using the most advanced and innovative CGI technology, he would be able to picture everything, including that little frog in the lake or even George’s dimple in the chin, without using any real material. Gee, he would have CGI’ed Clooney and Bullock from A to Z, if union rules did not prohibit it! The result? They created a stunning spectacle at which moviegoers could marvel -with good reason - during 91 min and would tell one another the next day how unbelievably breathtaking (in its Seinfeld acceptance :)) Gravity is near the coffee machine...
And that worked for a wide spectrum of people except for old geeks like me. I shouldn’t have brought up so clumsily the subject of my drawing talents as a possible support of my assertions that the images of the various vehicles, the starry sky and the Earth shown in Gravity are unconvincing and artificial. I don’t know if this may be of any help at this point, but for the open-minded, and they are numerous on IMdB forums, I will try one last time to formulate my ideas so that I won’t be misunderstood and pigeonholed as a pretentious airhead like Mr. pjmcgill142 feels compelled to do so amicably. Most of the images of extravehicular excursions shown in the movie are very spectacular and make of this movie a truly entertaining experience as such, regardless of the reality it is trying to project. What becomes a problem for me and also a lot of people who are not completely carried away by what they had seen, is that
• the images are simply too pretty, too sharply outlined; this is why I naively thought that my analogy with drawing would help, my mistake (honestly). More clearly said: if CGIs were so well made, one should be unaware that what one sees is not an actual photography; the effect fails when the outline (or profile, or silhouette) of an object stands out too much: it’s one of the major differences between drawing and painting, and this is something I know well and have an eye developed for it...
• the shadows are often still not quite right despite the incredibly hard efforts they invested in getting the lighting right (cf. Blu-Ray supplements)
• surprisingly, the fire inside the cabin was so poorly made that I’ve actually CGI-made fires I’ve seen in movies made 20 years earlier or with a much lower budget (a fire was perhaps too low-tech for the trendyish director to care about, I don’t know)
• .... and the Earth, our poor, dear, and much threatened planet: here, I once again stand by my initial opinion: it looked too much like one of these beautiful illustrations made by Nat’l Geographic artists for the magazine’s articles on planet exploration. It’s very easy to compare the best available recent photographs of the Earth taken from satellites with Gravity-style Earth depiction. Our planet seen from the astronauts’ standpoint looked too nice, or perhaps more accurately: actual pictures of the Earth did not pass the audition with director Cuarón. Too fuzzy and esthetically not quite right: real Earth views did not match the other elements, something that can be easily understood for moviemakers, who are, after all, visual artists. Why does movie making need this often misunderstood species, namely the art director? Art direction was most likely responsible for a number of decisions about the final “look” of CGIs such as the Earth, which is almost constantly present in the shots, so that it had to fit a number of criteria other than visual accuracy. I’m just saying most of the images of the Earth were in fact somewhat embellished in order to make a prettier view and a prettier picture.


I will conclude here, hoping that I will have helped some of you to understand my posts better, if it was necessary. As for my pen pal pjmcgill142, I have now given up on trying to convince you of the validity of my points. We have been dealing with the extremely subjective topic that visual perception and appreciation truly is. So far, I was not intending to convince everybody with such a difficult topic as esthetics. Just like one can’t pronounce absolute, ex cathedra judgments on the value of a musical piece, it is perfectly futile to try to prove with a CQFD conclusion that a picture looks right or not. There’s quite a substantial role for the relative ability of the subject to distinguish this or that feature – which is, BTW, something that can be actually measured in the lab! Just like the musical ear, i.e. the ability to determine whether two notes are identical, is something quantifiable and genetically programmed! And please, don’t make me say what I’m not saying: OK, I mentioned that I have a certain knack for drawing, but far from me the idea that I am a better judge of esthetics! The discussion was for the purpose of explaining the meaning of “looking artificial” with the naive hope of ending this debate without end...

And frankly, I couldn't say it better than Rhett about your opinion, since you keep sticking to things that I wrote to ridicule me. How many times did you have to bring up the fact that I mentioned something about my "drawing" talent? When someone keeps resorting to such tactics in a discussion, there’s a flag showing up that tells me to stop wasting my time, and I mean it now. As for your concluding cheap shot about my using the word “dithyrambic”, I will refrain from commenting, further than saying that my first language is French and dithyrambique is not pedantic in French. It’s not a rare word and certainly does not reek of pretentiousness. I was not aware that it might strike an Anglophone as being the language of a show-off. And if offered the choice, I’ll prefer openly rude people to people wrapping up their rudeness with stylish paper.

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Funny, when I thought this was a movie without any problems, it was almost flawless from start to finish and I don't use that word often for movies, even the ones I like a lot.

If I'm not replying to you, most probably you are on ignore.

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