Defying ‘Gravity’

Gravity has reaped rewards at the Baftas. But can it really be considered a British movie?

Few would quibble with the claim that Gravity is a compelling movie. With impressive visual effects and a masterful performance by Sandra Bullock as an accidental astronaut struggling to get back to Earth, it entertained audiences around the world. But we cannot be the only ones who raised an eyebrow when the clutch of awards it gained at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards included the one for best British film.

With the only two actors involved being American and with a Mexican director, one flippant response is that the only apparent British aspect was an occasional glimpse of northern Europe in the CGI background as the drama went on in near-earth orbit.

That is, of course, to underestimate the international nature of the modern film industry. The criterion for nomination for a Bafta is that the film has “significant British creative involvement”, and among the reasons Gravity qualified is it was filmed in part on sound stages at Shepperton Studios, the entrancing visual effects were the work of a British company, Framestore, and its producer was Harry Potter veteran David Heyman. Others might sniff that Twelve Years A Slave, a British-American production, was more truly British, but it did not contest the category.