Movie Review : 127 Hours

The Tale of a Shocking Fall and a Gritty Resolve

In April 2003 Aron Ralston, a 27-year-old hiker, fell and was trapped in a narrow slot in Blue John Canyon in Utah, his right arm wedged against the rock wall by a boulder. Mr. Ralston’s ordeal — described in many interviews after the fact and in his lively, unaffected memoir, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” — was a struggle for survival and a profound existential crisis.

But it was also, more pressingly, a practical challenge. Mr. Ralston, a trained engineer and a skilled, if sometimes careless, outdoorsman, understood his predicament, above all, as a series of technical problems. His solution was grisly and dramatic: using the blade of a cheap multipurpose tool, he cut off the immobilized arm between the elbow and the wrist, freeing himself after more than five days. Extreme as this action was, it was also logical, even downright ingenious.

127 HoursNOV. 5, 2010

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In bringing this horrific, perversely inspirational story to the screen, Danny Boyle has stayed true to Mr. Ralston’s can-do spirit. His new film, “127 Hours,” is itself the frequently dazzling and perpetually surprising solution to an imposing set of formal and creative conundrums. The stakes are not life and death, but rather life and art.

How do you make a startling, true anecdote into a dramatically satisfying feature film? How, more precisely, do you turn an experience of confinement and tedium — take a moment to consider the weight of that title — into a kinetic, suspenseful visual spectacle. How do you turn an immobilized protagonist into the hero of a motion picture, emphasis on motion? 

The most obvious answer is that you cast James Franco, an actor whose loose physicality and free-ranging intelligence make him good company for a lonely spell in wilderness. (Another answer is to employ two nimble and gifted cinematographers, Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle, and set them loose in some of the most beautiful places on earth.) 

At times Mr. Franco resembles a Looney Tunes character drawn by Chuck Jones. On his mountain bike and then on foot, Aron zooms across the desert landscape like the Roadrunner, only to be transformed into Wile E. Coyote, tripped up by the laws of physics and dependent on Acme-style gadgets and gizmos. 

A guileless, naturally funny fellow, he narrates his plight into a small video camera, imagining himself at one point as both host and guest on a peppy daytime interview show, complete with audience response. Reflecting on the mistakes that brought him to this unhappy pass — in particular, neglecting to tell anyone where he was going — he finds there is only one word to sum it all up: “Oops.”

 But “127 Hours,” a chronicle of accident and determination, is nearly flawless. Mr. Franco’s goofball energy connects the viewer to the character almost instantly, and Mr. Boyle’s speedy, jumpy style sends us out into the desert on a wave of caffeine and rock ’n’ roll. Aron is hardly one for rapt Wordsworthian contemplation of nature; his romanticism, though deep, is sensual and hedonistic rather than quietly reverent.

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He wants to cover distances in record time with his headphones on and is happy to share his exuberance with whomever he happens to meet. Bumping into Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn), two young women who seem to be lost, he charms and perplexes them with his knowledge of their surroundings and his casual adventurousness. The three of them frolic in an underground pool, they invite him to a party, and as he lopes off into the canyons one of them remarks, “I don’t think we figured in his day at all.”

 It is instructive to compare this movie’s Aron Ralston with Christopher McCandless, another real-life explorer whose unhappy encounter with the vast American wilderness was the subject of Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild.” In that film (as in the book by Jon Krakauer that was its source) Christopher was a figure of almost saintly asceticism, driven further and further from civilization by his disaffection with family and society and finding, ultimately, a half-accidental, half-willed martyrdom.

 Aron, in contrast, is better adjusted and therefore somewhat more elusive. Though he mutters “please” and “thank you” to whatever unseen force may be watching over him, he is more concerned with physics than metaphysics. And though he leaves Blue John with renewed appreciation for other people — having hallucinated a former girlfriend (Clémence Poésy), various friends and his parents (Kate Burton and Treat Williams) while he was down there — he never really rejected them in the first place.

 Mr. Boyle has a knack for tackling painful, violent or unpleasant subjects with unremitting verve and unstoppable joie de vivre. He has dealt with some pretty ugly stuff over the years — poverty and violence in “Slumdog Millionaire”; heroin addiction in “Trainspotting”; flesh-craving zombies in “28 Days Later” — but almost always with an eager, exuberant energy that makes his films invigorating rather than depressing.

 He is not one to chase after big ideas, preferring sensory intensity to reflection, but “127 Hours,” which Mr. Boyle wrote with Simon Beaufoy, his “Slumdog” writing partner, leaves you with a lot to think about, precisely because it is so attuned to the details of what is happening to Aron’s body.

 Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the film leaves you with the impression of having lived, vicariously but intensely, through something whose meaning is both profound and elusive.

 There are scenes in “127 Hours” that are hard to bear — the cracking of a bone, the severing of a nerve, the desperate consumption of a water bag filled with urine — but what these moments communicate is more than worth a jolt of discomfort or a spasm of revulsion. To say that this movie gets under your skin is only barely a figure of speech. It pins you down, shakes you up and leaves you glad to be alive.

 “127 Hours” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Some swearing (understandable given the circumstances) and a very graphic scene of self-mutilation.

127 HOURS

Directed by Danny Boyle; written by Mr. Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, based on the book “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” by Aron Ralston; directors of photography, Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak; edited by Jon Harris; music by A. R. Rahman; production design and costumes by Suttirat Larlarb; produced by Christian Colson, Mr. Boyle and John Smithson; released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.

WITH: James Franco (Aron Ralston), Amber Tamblyn (Megan), Kate Mara (Kristi), Clémence Poésy (Rana), Kate Burton (Aron’s Mom), Treat Williams (Aron’s Dad) and Lizzy Caplan (Sonja).

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/movies/05one.html?_r=0