Small, water-dwelling, segmented micro-animals with eight legs, waterbears are really something.
One of the most complex of all known polyextremophiles, they can thrive in physically or geochemically extreme conditions that
would be detrimental to most life on Earth.
They can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to
well above the boiling
point of water, pressures about 6 times stronger than pressures found in the deepest
ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a
person, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying
out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce.
But could they survive more than a single viewing of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, the
astonishingly bad, but incredibly popular, space junk soap opera currently orbiting US
and international multiplexes? I have my
doubts.
Jane and I saw Gravity this afternoon. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in this superficial, clichéd melodrama, says or
shows anything that wasn't expressed or implied more economically, elegantly and powerfully in Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey, especially beginning with the scene in that
film where HAL 9000 murders astronaut Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) and
astronaut Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea in his finest role) confronts and corrects the
situation.
2001 is a brave, passionate, but unsentimental work, which like
many of Kubrick’s films affirms
the enduring nature of human dignity (however flawed the ultimate results of human efforts)
achieved through determination,
diligence and active intelligence.
Character is revealed
through action rather than over-explanation and gassy discourse and
digression. To paraphrase Kubrick’s
immortal Colonel Bat Guano from
Dr. Strangelove, Gravity is a movie that went into combat with a lot of loose change in its pocket. George
Clooney’s Rip Torn-as-Patches O’Houlihan (DodgeBall) homage is unintentionally hilarious Best Supporting Actor Oscar-bait, as
they say. Rip was robbed in that
department, giving a far superior performance as the Knute Rockne of dodgeball.
Space was integral
to 2001’s drama, as it was to Forbidden
Planet, the Alien series, and even to the less potent Star Wars
sagas. Gravity is simply a kitchen sink potboiler that could just as easily been set in a tenement
apartment building, at a business office or on a psychiatrist’s couch. Space and especially weightlessness are
used as flimsy, overly-symbolic props, reminding me of the
teary, vaprous Tennessee Williams dramas I endlessly
endured in high school productions.
Poor Water Bear. Change the channel, little fellow. DodgeBall’s starting in a few minutes.
