One of the conversations I overheard when I left the theater was someone saying, "I thought it was a little too much with the all the dead kid stuff..." which really seems like an aimless complaint to me.

Personally, I thought the point of Stone's dead child was to REMOVE the pat theme of "going home" to a postcard setting of a family home lined with Sears annual photos and a golden lab running up to greet you. It was to establish Stone as a person who, by many people's measure, had nothing to live for -- no husband, no child, career aspirations which have just been met, then dashed. She had no greater motivation to go through the hell she did in space except the sheer individual drive to survive. If anyone had the motivation to give up and take nihilistic walk into the endless abyss, it would be Stone, not Kowalski.

But despite all that, despite her grief, despite the impossibility of her odds (which is mirrored in our tour of the sheer impossibility of what human beings have accomplished in space), Stone's innate survival instinct drives her forward. Yes, there's the moment where Saint Kowalski appears to give her that extra nudge in her lowest moment, but such an apparition can be explained by the skeptic (as hallucination / space madness) as well as the believer. It's a great little point of ambiguity in what is otherwise the stuff rationalist's dream about on Christmas Eve.

I also think it was a neat conceit in the story to find a way to have Stone tour the various space stations of those cultures who have made it outside earth's atmosphere. The American shuttle sends a Marvin the Martian doll floating out into the emptiness -- cute WB tie-in, sure, but still effective an effective symbol of America's global cultural legacy vis a vis the global impact of our creative entertainment. In Russia's station we see chess pieces floating by. in China's, a ping pong paddle finds its way through the frame. And of course we see the various religious iconography of these cultures, because one doesn't leave faith behind when embarking on a mission into space. All of these items are symbols of our cultural past littered throughout our frontier in space. To reduce it to space junk just to serve the 3D is to miss the point entirely...

And then, of course, the final scene of Stone emerging from the water and finding the strength to walk. The person who has no mate, has no child, has a "home" only filled with ghosts from the past, finds the strength to take those steps onto land simply because our instinct is to step forth.

This is the story of evolution. It's not "intelligent design," it's not "family before god" or "god before family" or anything like that, it's simply the individual's will to survive. The origin of species is creatures adapting to their environment. We've moved from the water, onto land, into advanced modern civilizations, past faith into an age of science, as we're driven to look into space above to find the next frontier. Chinese, Russian, American, we're all driven by the innate biological desire to survive, adapt, and explore.

Or maybe it was just pat heartstring-pulling to create a conflict of overcoming grief for Stone, but I think there was more intention than just emotional manipulation by creating the character the way Cuaron did...

but yeah -- anyone else? or was that just me?