Bullock lost in space in Gravity.
Bullock soars in emotionally and physically demanding film
Sandra Bullock will likely be invited back to the Oscars for her portrayal of the desperate astronaut in Gravity.
The Academy Awards shindig might be a little easier for Bullock to handle the second time around — she collected her first best actress statue in 2011 for The Blind Side. Familiarity, however, doesn’t necessarily guarantee a calmer state during the celebrated evening of glitz and glamour.
“I don’t think anybody can honestly feel comfortable at the Oscars,” the 49-year-old said at a downtown Toronto hotel suite.
“It is such a frighteningly powerful night of emotion, and you have on a dress that hurts somewhere and they’re making fun of you, and the fashion choice you wore.”
Certainly, her film choice is spot on. Bullock’s Gravity performance is a tour-deforce in many different ways, according to most critics who screened previews.
But the actress was more excited about the positive response to Gravity for the sake of director Alfonso Cuarón. “He’s been working on this for five years and nobody was sure it would work,” she said.
In the 3-D survival thriller, Bullock plays medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone, who is on her first space shuttle mission.
During Stone’s space walk with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney), unexpected space debris slashes into their shuttle, killing everybody on board and disabling the ship.
The incident leaves both of them stranded in their space suits, drifting dangerously off course and out of communication with mission control in Houston.
As the inexperienced Stone edges near panic, we discover she’s also coping with the recent and sudden death of her young child.
With their oxygen supply running dangerously low, options are few and far away, so the ticking clock begins as the veteran astronaut tries to get the rookie to focus on the necessary tasks at hand.
Cuarón, who co-wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás Cuarón, orchestrates the slow-build suspense precisely as Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography and Steven Price’s musical score enhances the haunting otherworldly mood.
And while Clooney’s costarring role is a key device, it is Bullock who provides the emotional essence to the proceedings as a near one-woman show.
Her range runs from quiet tenderness to breathless anxiety while she is enveloped in a suffocating helmet. And even she couldn’t resist the hypnotic Gravity pull as an audience member.
“The first time I saw (Gravity) was at the Venice Film Festival,” said Bullock of the movie’s world première last month.
“It was such a public forum, and I usually pick myself apart, but it felt like the movie went right into my body. It really felt like Alfonso had created this sensory ride that was so emotional it allowed you to bring your life experiences into it in a personal way.”
Her character grieving over the loss of a child was especially emotive.
“Who wants to even imagine that?” said Bullock, the divorced single mother of Louis, who was adopted in 2010.
“It was horrible to go there, and especially with someone who was not able to show her emotions and who might have been just as happy if she perished.”
Lucky for her, in between those 14-hour days, “I had the luxury of unscrewing my head, going home to smooch my boy.”
The physical side of the portrayal wasn’t as demanding, but she did prepare herself for months before the gruelling shoot, which required the actress to simulate zero gravity.
To that end, Bullock, swaddled in a cumbersome space suit and helmet, needed to make precise movements in wire-rigged contraptions or inside a three-metre-tall cube, which simulated illumination in space.
For subtle zero-gravity simulation, she had puppeteers guide her movements.
“They were behind a screen and I had a wire system and they knew if I reached a position in zero gravity my body would keep going in a certain direction,” Bullock said. “It’s a hard thing to describe other than that we need to make another movie on how we made a zerogravity movie.”
She was also suspended by harnessed devices that mimicked tumbling and turning against the backdrop of already-filmed sequences that were computer-generated images.
“I guess it was like doing synchronized swimming,” Bullock said of the movement process. “But nobody can really tell you how to prepare for it.”
Pre-filming, she ended up hiring two Broadway dancers to get her in shape for the rigours ahead while “rebuilding” her form for some pivotal scenes at the climax.
“My character is this brilliant woman, but her brain is all that she has left,” noted Bullock. “So the image that came to mind is that her body is like a robot’s body that gets her to where she wants to go.”
Meanwhile, there is the Clooney factor. His connection with Bullock is undeniable.
“We’ve known each other for 20 years, but that doesn’t mean we knew we were going to click on screen,” she said. “George is a life force, and very much like his astronaut, he was born to live and die doing what he’s doing.”
And, yes they are assessing the possibility of doing another movie together.
“We would like it to be on the ground — something where we could be in the same room,” said Bullock, smiling. “Even if it takes another 20 years, it would be worth it.”