Briefly: This is incredible, and definitely worth a watch for Gravity fans (and who isn’t one).
Remember that intense scene in Gravity when Dr. Stone was finally able to make contact with Earth, but only to a man speaking in a foreign language? The conversation was a heartbreaking realization that Stone would never make it back down to Earth, and that this broken conversation would be the last that she would ever have. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.
Now, via THR, you can see the other side of the conversation. Alfonso’s son Jonas has directed a seven-minute short entitled Aningaaq, which showcases the opposite end of that haunting conversation. The short has been making festival rounds, will be included on the Gravity DVD/Blu-Ray, and is generating a good amount of Oscar buzz.
Here’s a great explanation of how the short came to be, straight from the original article:
The idea for Aningaaq, which follows an Inuit fisherman stationed on a remote fjord in Greenland, occurred to the Cuarons as they were working out the beats for the Gravity screenplay. “It’s this moment where the audience and the character get this hope that Ryan is finally going to be OK,” Jonas, 31, tells THR. “Then you realize that everything gets lost in translation.” Both Cuarons spent time in the glacial region (Alfonso once toyed with setting a movie there) and fell in love with the barren vastness of its frozen wilderness. During one of those visits, Alfonso met a drunken native who would become the basis for the title character, played by Greenland’s Orto Ignatiussen. But it wasn’t until Jonas, on a two-week trek gathering elements for his film, was inspired by the local inhabitants’ profound attachment to their sled dogs that he decided to incorporate that element into the plot.
The short was filmed “guerrilla style” on location on a budget of about $100,000 — most of which went toward the 10-person crew’s travel costs — and Cuaron completed it in time to meld the dialogue into Gravity’s final sound mix. The result is a seamless conversation between Aningaaq and Ryan, stranded 200 miles above him, the twin stories of isolated human survival providing thematic cohesion. Still, Jonas says he was careful “to make it a piece that could stand on its own.” Should both get Oscar noms, an interesting dynamic would emerge: Two films potentially could win for representing different sides of one conversation, to say nothing of having come from father and son.
Now, watch the short below, and let us know what you think! On that note, how much did you love Gravity?