“Either way, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.”
this is definitely one of the most impactful movie i have watched in a while. it just lead me thinking about so many many many things!

i just want to share some beauty of this film. be it the director’s intention or not, and definitely spoilers ahead.

the movie start, showing the vast emptiness of space, and the beauty of earth from above and it was simply stunning on the big screen. you hear people communicating over radio, between the people in space and Houston. then as the screen focus into the shuttle, that’s pretty much the only thing you see for the rest of the movie! there’s no silly flashback, no cutting to Houston, or any other place for that matter.

the beginning shows life. you as you would expect it to be, everyone going through their routine, occasionally faced with issue where things does work, and you just have to resolve it, cause that’s just life. i like how the mission commander was just bumping around, a perfect representation of life! “while there’s people working hard, there’s always people just bumping themselves around!” but otherwise, it was just showing how beautiful life can be.

then an emergency happens where they have to evacuate and return to their shuttle immediately. it’s an annoying scene, but of course, without this scene the movie have to story to tell! it’s an annoying scene cause it make this illustration that happens everyday in life! when shit happens, run, or maybe not always run, but act on it immediately. especially if you don’t know how bad or terrible that shit can be! it’s like a “i told you so moment”. but well, yes, shit could have happened even if she bothered to stop her work immediately to evacuate. we will never know, but that’s not the point.

then disaster strike. every time disaster strikes, people find themselves lost, confused, and usually end up just crying for help. the vast emptiness in space, the spinning and turning, the separation completely put these feelings into motion, letting you experience this emotion visually. it’s scary. it’s unthinkable. unimaginable.

the mission commander then came to her rescue. but it was after a good few minutes, where the director just let you immerse yourself in a sense of hopeless-ness and emptiness. it’s really eerie and sad. help come, but with all help, it’s never easy. like one of my favourite quote, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” i realise i wasn’t talking at all about the plot but solely on my interpretation. but you probably need to watch the movie yourself to full understand all these. the mission commander came to her rescue, and decided to return to the shuttle. otw back, they stumbled into one of the engineer. this poor dude head was basically smashed right through, with some shoe look-a-like object. it’s disgusting to stare at. but it just show the vulnerability of life, how weak and fragile we actually are.

they returned to their shuttle to find everyone dead, and the shuttle in a unusable state. they decided to head to the ISS and hopefully use the Soyuz to return to home, to earth. according to wikipedia, Soyuz is a russian only program on the ISS, so the russian buttons etc are pretty accurate here. they successfully reach the ISS to find that the crew have probably departed on one of the Soyuz, and the other Soyuz have it’s parachute accidentally deployed. the plan was then to use this Soyuz to get to the Chinese Space Station, and use their version of Soyuz. they successfully hang onto the ISS, but at high speed with newton’s first law! an object in motion will remain in motion. the ISS was just moving too fast, and they have difficult catching on. both almost lose it completely, until stone got entangled in the parachute ropes, and she manage to grab onto matt on his tether. it’s like a roof hanging scene except in space, “let go, go save yourself” classic. he eventually did, but what’s really nice here is, he did not have to die immediately! he just float in space, and continue giving words of encouragement to push her on. so it’s not a typical type of “go save yourself” classics.

after a struggle to get into the shuttle, she tried in desperation to call out to matt, to no response, when a fire break out. i like how they provided a sneak when the spark happens and the fire started floating in zero gravity. it’s like such a beautiful showcase of cause and effect, and this was done repeatedly a few times in the movie, although i am trying hard to recall which. the fire forced her to get into the soyuz earlier.

now this is one really nice scene. she was entangled into the rope which saved her from getting lost in space earlier. but now, this very same rope is preventing her from properly detaching from ISS cause it’s all entangled up. such perfection life story! what saved you today may come back tomorrow to shit on you! how else can this be illustrated? it’s just beautiful writing. that entanglement is never good, it’s a very bad idea to leave anything tangled or be tangled in one.

she eventually free herself but not before the debris came back round and pretty much trashed her soyuz. she made it! begin to breath for a while and get ready to thrust herself to the chinese space station. i should just call it CSS from now. the scenes that follow are really sad. she realise her soyuz got no fuel, and so got nothing to fire the main rocket forward! it was the end! in desperation, got into a radio communication with a random stranger on the ground. she hear dogs barking, baby crying, and just other human voices. it’s such a sad scene cause it shows how often we simply do not stop or even slow down our pace to smell the roses (not literally, cause i think it’s really just weird to do that!) but yes, how seemingly little thing like a dog’s bark amplifies into something so importance when you have lost it all. i believe the baby cry was there, to compliment her story with her kid and also to remind us, that you kids are probably the most important person in your life. value them, love them, treasure them. this scene made me think about many other things too, although i shouldn’t digress here.

giving up, she decided to release all the oxygen and to stop living. an epic portrayal never to give up in life, never to give up believing. it was such a drastic scene, her hallucination was epic. the relationship, between the two of them, and how you have to live and fight death because someone have sacrifice their life for you to continue living. it’s beautiful.

the use of the fire extinguisher to propel herself towards the CSS is simply funny! it’s like the scene from despicable me where the minion lost in space were just moving around with it’s gas canister. always a moment for fun and laughter.

now this is my favourite scene in the entire movie. but completely annoyed! haha cause it came out as a joke to the majority of the audience 🙁
getting into the chinese space station and eventually it’s version of soyuz to return back home, it was simply a moment of faith. in your last option, your last available pod to bring you back home, that even when you go no idea what these buttons means, how you are suppose to operate them etc, it expresses a moment where you take faith, and just believe in yourself, believe in miracles. or simply just believing in good faith. i find it really difficult to explain this scene, because the emotions was overwhelming. completely overwhelming.

eventually returning to earth. i think the water landing and rushing water filling up the shuttle was completely intentional. simply to add effect into the closing scene. the closing was an evolution, coming out from the water, crawling, trying to get up, failing but still trying, and eventually stood up and took steps. a perfect summary of the film. 脚踏实地.

i never talked about the dialogue, because there’s simply too much good dialogue! haha the whole show was just a dialogue with visual! incredibly good complimenting dialogue, about life, love, marriage, family, career, everything.

wonderful movie. make me wonder, if i should just take chances or go with the wait 😡