The film “Gravity” is intense almost to a fault. Long camera shots from a single point of view, a loud, deep sound track, and special effects that no doubt cost a fortune all convey a full palette of emotions – primarily fear and panic. But looking beyond the surface and budget of the film, it is a prime example of the hero’s journey and holds a possible, strong metaphor.

The film centers around two astronauts, Dr. Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalsky, stranded in space after debris from a satellite destroys their ship and massacres the rest of their crew. The film is the story of Dr. Stone and Kowalsky trying to get back to earth while dodging the still-orbiting satellite debris and an assortment of other dangers.

The movie is shown in real time, meaning that the running time for the movie (a short ninety-one minutes) is the same as the amount of time it takes for the characters to go from the first scene to the final one.

The remarkable thing about this is that despite the brevity of the film, it’s still effective in showing Stone going through the many phases of the hero’s journey. The movie begins with the call to adventure, or the destruction of Dr. Stone’s spacecraft. She then meets something of a mentor, Kowalsky – a warm, talkative person who keeps calm in the face of absolute danger. She is later forced to part with him and faces the challenges of trying to survive in a setting humans are not meant to inhabit, all while trying to find a way to go back to earth. I can’t very much describe the climax or return without spoiling too much, but I will say that they follow the monomyth to a certain extent as well.

So one way of viewing this movie is as a complete hero’s journey, but that isn’t the only way. You see, early on Dr. Stone reveals that her daughter died some time ago, and in describing it reveals that she still hasn’t gotten over the shock or despair. And she is also literally removed from the earth, orbiting hundreds or thousands of miles above it, trying desperately to return from where she isolated herself. So really the entire film is just one step of the hero’s journey – the underworld, the hero’s lowest point, her most terrible failure: letting her daughter die by something as simple as falling down while playing tag. The whole movie is her trying to return from the underworld and somehow get back to earth and reach some sort of closure on her life’s disaster.

All in all, I would recommend seeing “Gravity,” but don’t expect something that you can really view without being a little bit overwhelmed. Even the most passive, desensitized viewer will be somehow affected by the utter despair and horror which is, in my opinion, a little bit over-the-top for this film.