If anybody pitches you an idea about a film in which the main guy is trapped under a rock in a desolate Utah canyon, and amputates his own arm to get himself freed, what would you say ?Some of the obvious questions would be
Isn’t this documentary material?
Where is the action in the action movie if the guy can’t move?
How are you going to shoot once he is trapped?
The camera would be still after that?
Where is the suspense if the end is known?
Danny Boyle’s follow up to his academy award winning film is something that many would be sceptical about. He could have used this chance to make any film he wanted .Yet he chose to tell mountain climber Aron Ralston’s gut – wrenching story.
127 Hours escapes claustrophobic tendencies as Boyle uses, flashbacks, reveries, hallucinations and premonitions to bring motion in 'an action movie with a guy who can't move'. He brings latitude to a subject very restricted in breadth and shoots without being sentimental about the situation.
Many of us would have thought and done the same thing, but then failed half way only to be discovered dead a week later and becoming a part of a small story on a local news channel. Aron infact did manage to cut his arm off and, lived to tell the tale and deserves to be immortalised on screen. James Franco has not missed one beat in playing Aron Ralston right down to saying ‘oops’. Notice his quivering voice when he says the rock has been waiting for him for years ever since it came down on earth probably as a meteorite or when he interviews himself as he records on the handycam.
He is reckless, arrogantly self confident and charming but in the end realises that although given his steely resolve, we all need a little help ,human touch and interaction.
Sometimes you make a mistake and are allowed to dwell about it for a long time, in solace and then things become clearer, choices begin to present themselves. Something similar happens here to Aron. Surviving the elements of nature for over 5 days he finally cuts himself off the rock, climbs the cliff wall and hikes over 8 miles until he is finally rescued. That whole sequence is elevated by the simply brilliant ‘Festival’ track by AR Rahman. When it gets over you will be happy walking out of the theatre, both arms still present but never sad that Aron Ralston has only one.
Boyle’s films are always stylish, whether style follows function or the function dictates style is open to discussion. Every Danny Boyle film has entertained at some level from Trainspotting to 28 Days Later to Sunshine to The Beach.
I am a fan of Boyle’s extreme aerial zoom-out of camera, which he uses often to showcase the immensity of the situation. It can be the wilderness of Canyons in 127 hours, the expanse and kitsch of the slums in Slumdog Millionaire or the beauty of the forbidden beach in The Beach .Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, establish the vastness of the Blue John canyon, Utah and the very specific details of Ralston’s crevice trap, like a sip of water,or his gradual exhaustion and dehyrdation. The filming is energetic and kinetic.
After its film festival premieres, it has got the Oscar buzz, but I am not quite sure it would win more than 1, if any .However 127 hours is among Boyle’s best films yet. Must watch!
