In a year populated with mediocre inspiring true stories like The King’s Speech and The Fighter, Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy give a crash course on how to film a true story with heart which lifts up our spirits, with bloody graphic details and audacity and without manipulative sentimentality. 127 Hours is a perfect movie from the opening shot to the final note of the song ‘Festival’ by Sigur Ros which concludes it.
Aaron Ralston (James Franco) gets away from the city for a weekend to explore the canyon in Utah. He has food, water and utensils. He’s a cocky expert, he’s done this before many times. So many times he even acts as a guide to two girls lost in the canyon, Kristi and Megan (Kata Mara and Amber Tamblyn respectively). He knows shortcuts and cool places to visit. He’s so sure of himself he doesn’t even bother to inform friends or family of where he’s going.
Then he falls in a crevice and a boulder falls on his arm, trapping him meters below the surface in the middle of a lunar landscape barely visited by human beings. The movie chronicles his five days trapped there and his agonising escape, which involved cutting his arm with a blunt knife, climbing down a rock and walking until a family of explorers found him almost dead.
So why is this predictable movie worth watching? Simple. No one makes movies like Danny Boyle, especially when he co-writes the screenplay with Simon Beaufoy, one of the finest screenwriters in the business (The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire).
Boyle’s detractors say he has an MTV style, but for me he’s audacious and original in the way he plays with the camera and tries to find strange angles to shoot from. And strange angles abound in this movie. Who else would think of filming from inside Aaron’s canteen to show his last drops of water entering his mouth? Who’d shoot from inside a arm to show a knife actually hitting a bone? Who would put a counter in the screen’s corner showing the temperature in the cave dropping at night to show the conditions Aaron endured? And when Aaron gets trapped, who’d film, with wicked irony, an airplane flying very, very far, leaving a white trail in the air? Boyle is a madman, bless him!
The camera madness starts right from the start, when the screen splits in three. This is a technique Boyle uses a lot in the movie, but the most effective use is the opening sequence. As the movie shows us Aaron preparing himself to leave his comfy apartment the split screen bombards us with images of crowds, brand names like McDonalds, traffic jams, neon lights. In one word: civilisation – everything Aaron is leaving behind. And when Aaron arrives at the canyon the cluttered split screen gives way to wide panoramic shots of dreary landscape. The contrast is amazing! Boyle continues to prove that he’s a master of visual storytelling.
The movie also boasts a career-defining performance by James Franco. Franco’s performance crackles with joie de vivre, enthusiasm and cheerfulness. Sure we can think, Aaron is an idiot for going out there all alone without telling anyone, he’s cocky as hell. But Franco gives Aaron such a humane personality that we can’t help loving him.
Aaron’s time trapped under the boulder allows him to rethink his life. Although perseverance is an important theme in the movie, the real emotional power comes from Aaron recognising, almost too late in his life, his selfishness and the way he treats his family and friends, and realising that wanting to do everything alone got him in there. The most heartbreaking scene comes when he imagines himself in a talk show and chastises himself for not relying on people more often.
But, amidst Aaron’s growth, this movie puts forth a beautiful story about the power of hope. Not since The Pianist has cinema given erected such a monument to the triumph of the human spirit. The Pianist is a difficult movie, harrowing in depicting the atrocities of the Holocaust. The protagonist, the pianist Spizlman, superbly played by Adrien Brody, faces each new day of hiding in the Jewish ghetto as a challenge. Although we can’t compare Aaron’s experience to his, they find common ground in their refusal to give up, in their determination to live. 127 Hours starts with the song ‘Never Hear Surf Music Again,’ which says ‘there must be some chemical that makes us different from animals.’ This can only be another grim irony by Boyle. Consider. Foxes bite their own legs off to free themselves from traps. Aaron cuts his arm off. Survival prevails over everything else. Life is beautiful but it has a price that, most of us going through our ordinary lives, ignore until we meet extraordinary circumstances.
Aaron’s self-amputation scene is graphic and long, but the viewers who can stomach it will be rewarded with the most sublime ending of the year. 127 Hours is the feel good of the year, a movie so emotionally draining that the ending isn’t just an historical fact but a psychological necessity for the viewer desperate for closure. It’s a movie that intimately and tenderly pushes us towards the protagonist. Aaron’s liberation isn’t just the ending of a true story, Boyle and Beaufoy make this conclusion our deepest desire. If Aaron Ralston had died, they would have had to rewrite history because no ending short of Aaron freeing himself would satisfy the viewer who grows to love him, to laugh and cry with him. And there will be tears. Tears of despair and tears of joy, especially of joy. Anyone can film a true story, but not everyone can make the viewer anxiously wait for an ending everyone already knows in advance. Danny Boyle can.
Director: Danny Boyle
Screenplay: Aaron Ralston (book), Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy
Cast: James Franco, Clémence Poésy, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara
Country: USA/UK
Runtime: 94 min
Film Rating: 
