The Spiritual Weight of ‘Gravity’

Gravity

The new film “Gravity”, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, just released but is already gaining lots of buzz. It features a young medical engineer (Bullock) on her first shuttle mission, alongside a veteran astronaut (Clooney) making his last flight before retirement. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving the two completely alone—tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.
 

(If you can’t see the video, click here.)
 
Film reviewers Stephen Greydanus and Barbara Nicolosi have both raved about it, with the latter saying:
 

“Visually gorgeous, packed with thrills and heart, “Gravity” is a thoroughly stunning achievement and ought to win Best Picture for the decade as far as I am concerned. If it doesn’t win for Sound Mixing and Editing, I will personally picket the Academy.”

 
After you see the film, check out Fr. Robert Barron’s video commentary which unlocks the movie’s key spiritual theme (spoiler alert):


(If you can’t see the video, click here.)
 

“It occurred to me that Sandra Bullock’s and George Clooney’s character would have come to age around my own time. And my generation was a lost generation that lost a lot of their moorings to the spiritual. We ran with technology. Technology became a source of entertainment, joy, transcendence, and connection, but all that is just ephemeral, a facade.
 
[Bullock’s character] learns by the end of the movie to pray—simply by saying “Thank you”—and I think that’s the key to the movie….Real transcendence is found when, in our humility, we can say “Thank you” to the transcendent source of life and being.”