I like her energy. Men would love love her energy. Levi loves her energy.
This kind of woman is endlessly fascinating to men until they begin to feel that she threatens their dignity.
Drasa is strong, intelligent, confident, and she doesn’t shy away from being vulnerable. That’s what makes her whole.
“What do you do when sadness overwhelms you?”
“Sometimes… I write poems.”
I like The Gorge, even though people seem collectively split between whether it is good or bad. It’s as if they can’t decide whether it’s a true sci-fi film with a good premise or a true romantic drama with a good premise.
But it doesn’t have to be either one of those things.
To me, a movie has the power to refuse everyone’s expectations. That’s why some movies can be heartbreakingly disappointing to certain people and absolutely perfect for others.
The point is, when you watch something, don’t expect anything. Just try to notice which emotions it triggers in you while you’re watching and afterward.
The Gorge is a beautiful, bittersweet encounter between two people who were never supposed to meet. Like in many relationships, sometimes we don’t even understand how we ended up with someone in the first place.
Movies like this remind me that hurt people can help mend each other’s pain. Their trauma. Or their shame.
No matter what happened in the past, or what we still carry with us, sometimes we simply choose to be present. We decide that, when we’re with this person, perhaps we can become better people.
And sometimes, we understand how distance can make the urge to be with someone even more intense.
You can see them, but you can’t reach them.
You can communicate, but there is always this feeling that if you could only close the distance, everything would finally make sense.
And perhaps that urge is precisely what makes us human: our emotions, our needs, our wants, and, of course, our desires.
But what happens when that urge isn’t there? Does that make us less human?
There is something we need to understand, though: if Levi hadn’t manned up and fired that grappling line across the gorge to reach Drasa, they never would have ended up together.
That is intention.
The damn motivation to close the gap.
Listen. I’m not here to review The Gorge, let alone criticize it.
Sometimes, when I watch a movie, I have this bad habit of connecting it to my own life, to experiences I’ve had, passages from books I once read, or theories I’ve invented simply because I have the freedom to do so.
And, naturally, I’ll start imagining the worst possible thing that could happen after the movie ends.
So, back to The Gorge.
Miles Teller successfully erased the hatred I’d carried for him since the Divergent series. He tried to do it with Top Gun: Maverick and Whiplash, and admittedly, I did soften up a bit. But damn, he was so fucking annoying throughout Divergent.
Which, annoyingly enough, only proves that he’s a damn good actor.
In The Gorge, all I see is an entirely new person, someone who doesn’t feel tied to any of the characters he has played before.
The same thing happens whenever I watch Robert Pattinson. You aren’t condemned to see him as Edward Cullen for the rest of his life. You see Cedric Diggory, Batman, Neil from Tenet: a wide array of people rather than the same actor wearing different costumes.
And we’re not going to talk about Anya Taylor-Joy because she’s so fucking awesome, obviously. Let’s save that for another day.
For this post, I simply want to appreciate The Gorge and the intricate whirlwind of emotions it ignited in me. Most of all, warmth.
The connection between Drasa and Levi is one of the most compelling I’ve seen in a while.
Even spies and military people get lonely and need company, amirite?
And watching them make their relationship work by remaining patient through distance, time, and literal threats, I must admit: I could learn a thing or two from them.
Powerful as Drasa is, she allows herself to be simply a woman when it comes to Levi, not only a soldier, not only someone trained to survive.
Her confidence, along with the cheeky, sensual questions she throws at him, is precisely what draws Levi closer. And Drasa isn’t drawn to him merely because he is someone nice to talk to, not just a friend conveniently waiting on the other side of the gorge.
Nor is it only about the perfect shots they both made during their previous missions, although we must admit: watching someone be exceptionally good at what they do can make an attraction burn considerably hotter.
What truly pulls them together is the vulnerability they both carry: the quiet admission that they need each other. And in the end, they don’t leave that need suspended across the distance.
They act on it. They make it real.
