Gravity’s Law is a four-minute plus short film directed by Matt McDermott based on a poem of the same name by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Like Rilke’s writing and McDermott’s direction, the slow-motion visuals shot by director of photography Tim Green are suitably poetic.
Add to that a mesmerizing soundtrack plus wonderful narration by Bill Fellows and you have one beautiful work of art.
So, press the top left play button on the above feature image so the video can play for you.
The film made in 2016 was commissioned by Channel 4 Random Acts.
Here is the text from the poem Gravity’s Law itself:
How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing,
each stone, blossom, child,
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to Earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.