Gravity’s rainbow

By Vithal C Nadkarni

“Don’t let go,” says the catchline on a poster of Hollywood’s new blockbuster Gravity. But George Clooney, who plays the loquacious astronaut, says the exact opposite to the psychologically-damaged “mission specialist” heroine played by Sandra Bullock. Otherwise, it’s a no-brainer to say “don’t let go” in the weightless outer space where concepts such as up and down have no meaning; where letting go of your lifeline is instantaneously fatal.

This is why only those with the “right stuff” are chosen to fly in an environment so intrinsically hostile to life. The triumph of someone who crashed all her simulator missions during training, therefore, becomes more inspiring than a conventional flick with its cleancut alpha male stereotypes would.

At the visceral level, the experience of being abandoned in space or on earth goes beyond sci-fi. For some people, our ultimate abandonment lies in the act of being born on earth itself. Everyone comes here without a flight manual.

We do not really know where we come from and for what purpose; death being the only certainty in life. Is that abandonment? Or is it “ultimate freedom” to make of life whatever we end up doing with it?

This could also explain why Evangelical Christians are ecstatic about the movie. Some are viewing it as an allegory for Resurrection: others are generally raving about the movie because it allegedly validates the idea of an afterlife and shows “the presence of God throughout life”. The manner in which the heroine discovers “a new purpose in empty dark of space” is also a revelation. Thank gravity!