There’s nothing especially revelatory in JoBlo’s 12.16 posting of an official Warner Bros. synopsis of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity. It’s roughly the same information passed along by costar George Clooney six weeks ago.
The interesting thing for me is a comment from JoBlo’s Mike Sampson: “There have been rumors that the film will be shot, or at least presented, in one take, which would be fascinating to experience.”
In July 2010 a posting allegedly from Framestore’s website reported that “Cuaron’s long and fluid style (the opening shot alone is slated to last at least 20 minutes) leaves no cut points to hide behind.” But I’d never heard that the entire film might be a zeo-gravity adaptation of the strategy behind Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rope.
The official synopsis supplies character names for the two-hander. Sandra Bullock, who has the lead role, plays Dr. Ryan Stone, “a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission.” Clooney plays Matt Kowalsky, a “veteran astronaut in command of his last flight before retiring.”
I’m sorry but Kowalsky is the name of a buck private or a sergeant or an ensign in a World War II movie. It’s the same kind of name as Muldoon, and Clooney has never struck me as a guy with a meathead name. He’s a Mike Slattery, a Darren Schmidt, a David Fleming, a Hank Grant.
“On a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes,” the synopsis reads. “The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone — tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.
“The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth…and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space.”
One of them is going to die, I’m presuming. Clooney’s guy, probably.