Already, two weeks before its release, the hype surrounding Alfonso Cuarón's new film, Gravity, appears to be the sort that no movie can possibly live up to. I saw it for the first time (and not by any means the last) at the Toronto International Film Festival, and even in that demure city, among the naturally reticent and cynical crowd at a press screening, strangers randomly approached other strangers to gush about it.

Such over-the-top reactions inevitably breed a counter-response, and already you can feel it brewing. The New York Times describes the film as somewhat cold.Others whisper that it's a huge technical achievement, obviously, but ultimately hollow. Don't believe these attempts to diminish Gravity. The hype in this case is very much appropriate and utterly deserved. If you're even moderately interested in the movies, or what they can be, you've got to see it.

The story of the film is deceptively simple, which I think explains some of the resistance to it. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts who have the misfortune to be mid–space walk when a series of satellites explodes, sending masses of debris at them at five times the speed of a bullet. They are thrown suddenly into the void, without bearings and with all their equipment breaking down.

The plot, such as it is, is little more than Bullock moving from machine to machine in orbit as she looks for a way to return to earth. But Gravity is not a film with a plot so much as it is a film about a condition. Everything happens in zero gravity. Which means that all the shots seem impossible and the experience of watching it all transpire is one of complete disorientation. It is the integration of the technological and the human that makes this film so unique and so impressive.

It's also the first truly 3-D movie. Every other example of the form thus far, even Avatar, is really an ordinary movie maximized by the use of technology. Even in the hands of a master like Scorsese, in Hugo, the format has basically been a way of upping the entertainment value and, perhaps more important, forcing people to actually go into theaters (and pay a premium when they do). But while any of those films could have been made in 2-D without suffering any real harm, Gravity is the first that could not. When you attend press screenings of movies, they have guys watching the crowd to see that nobody's recording it on their phone for resale on the street. For Gravity they should just let everyone in with camcorders. The movie would make no sense whatsoever if seen outside the confines of a 3-D theater.

It also may be the densest visual experience ever made. The disorientation is physical, visceral — the audience I was with limped out of the cinema grasping at chair arms for balance — but it's also an intellectual disorientation. Gravity is a film that constantly makes the critical viewer wonder: How did he do that? And after you've asked yourself that question for a while, you begin to marvel: How did he make a film in 2013 that prompts a roomful of people inured to visual spectacle to wonder how it was made? At one point Bullock arrives at an abandoned space station, and floats through it with the wreckage of the place drifting around her. I have no idea how Cuarón's team did that. I'm sure there's an explanation; obviously there is. But it's like a continuously unfurling magic trick on the screen. The pleasure of being fooled is immense, and even more welcome for how rare it's become.

The real emotion at the heart of Gravity, the core of the narrative, is a thoroughly contemporary one: the sensation of being lost when the machines break. Few people have been to space, but everybody has had their WiFi crash at a particularly essential time. Everybody has known the peculiarly all-consuming horror when an iPhone falls into a toilet. The immediate response is a simultaneous anger at the machines and a desperate need to have them back. Cuarón uses that sensation to create a philosophical thriller — the hunger to return to earth is palpably intense, but always there lurks the question: What the hell are you doing in this place where humans are not supposed to be? Our technological lives are inhuman, but they are also, it would appear, our only means of salvation.

In its unique blend of technology and narrative, Gravity rests at the very highest point of filmmaking. The only movie it can be properly compared with, I think, is The Wizard of Oz — which used Technicolor to create an entire alternate universe (as opposed to merely color the one we live in). And though it was far from the first Technicolor movie, The Wizard of Oz defined the technology forever because it used the format to tell a story that could be told no other way.

Gravity is the same. Such an achievement is a direct challenge to other filmmakers. What if instead of using the vast new forms of the medium to make larger and larger disaster porn, we used them to make singular experiences? What if instead of using technology to make slightly more efficient and profitable entertainment, we used it to make unforgettable art? Bullock has to negotiate spacecraft to return to earth, and Cuarón's journey as a director is much the same. The technologically enabled magnificence of Gravity returns us to a very simple, even childlike moment: that feeling of awe at the power of movies to transport us.

The trailer and more photos below...

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

PLUS: Read More Stephen Marche on The Culture Blog >>

Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture.

Stephen Marche Stephen Marche is a novelist who writes a monthly column for Esquire magazine about culture.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io