Cast: James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Clémence Poésy
Fans of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later will delight in Boyle’s return to something a bit more punchy and gruesome after the sickly-sweet Slumdog Millionaire. 127 Hours tells the true story of Aron Ralston, an American mountain climber who was forced to cut off his own arm with a blunt army knife after he became trapped in a canyon in Utah. Ralston (Franco) belongs in the canyons, so Boyle doesn’t waste much time introducing us to whatever dull, domesticated contrivance of a life he leads beyond their sandstone borders. Within minutes of the film’s opening we are already soaring over Utah’s epic fiery plateaus and swooping down into it’s cracked surfaces to find Ralston leaping across dunes on his mountain bike. It is clear that Ralston is not a man with a hobby; he is a man with an unshakeable passion for this heartland of the West.
Ralston is completely alone here, free to whoop and scream with excitement and race around half naked if he so wishes. Even when he chances upon a pair of beautiful and hopelessly lost walkers – Kristi and Megan – he treats them as though they were his guests and shows them around a few of his favourite haunts. After a few hours splashing around in a subterranean creek, Ralston leaves the girls and continues on his lonely journey to ‘anywhere but home’. But soon after leaving the girls, Ralston loses his footing on a loose boulder and finds himself trapped, in an upright position, his feet barely able to touch the ground, with his right arm pinned between the canyon wall and the offending boulder that has travelled down with him.
This is already universally known as “that film where the guy chops his arm off”, and this twisted dramatic irony is where the real horror of the story lies. The viewer knows, from the moment the boulder lands, that Ralston will have no choice but to hack off his arm; and there is a hint of voyeurism inherent to the idea of just sitting and watching him squirm for 127 hours before finally handing us his pound of flesh. Boyle is acutely aware of this element of the film, and makes good use of the fact that Ralston was an avid self-publicist with a passion for gadgets, who seemingly never went anywhere without his tiny video camera. From the moment Ralston realises he may never get out of the canyon alive, he records messages to his loved ones and documents his declining health. In one surreal sequence he narrates his story as if he were on a daytime TV show, accentuating the idea that we are – in some sense – taking pleasure in his pain.
James Franco is utterly engaging and strangely entertaining as the unfortunate adventurer. He is forced to hold the audience’s attention on his own for almost the entire duration of the film (even Tom Hanks had Wilson!) While this is obviously testament to the actor’s talent, there is no doubt that the reason this film works so well is because of Boyle’s characteristically racy and visceral style of filmmaking. Combining elements of a ‘music video’ aesthetic with subtle, intimate moments and epic John Ford vistas, Boyle
never gives the audience a moment to tire of the difficult subject matter. And I won’t even begin to describe the stomach churning power of the climactic scene where Ralston slowly hacks away at his arm… you have to see it to believe it.
Fans of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later will delight in Boyle’s return to something a bit more punchy and gruesome after the sickly-sweet Slumdog Millionaire. 127 Hours tells the true story of Aron Ralston, an American mountain climber who was forced to cut off his own arm with a blunt army knife after he became trapped in a canyon in Utah. Ralston (Franco) belongs in the canyons, so Boyle doesn’t waste much time introducing us to whatever dull, domesticated contrivance of a life he leads beyond their sandstone borders. Within minutes of the film’s opening we are already soaring over Utah’s epic fiery plateaus and swooping down into it’s cracked surfaces to find Ralston leaping across dunes on his mountain bike. It is clear that Ralston is not a man with a hobby; he is a man with an unshakeable passion for this heartland of the West.
Ralston is completely alone here, free to whoop and scream with excitement and race around half naked if he so wishes. Even when he chances upon a pair of beautiful and hopelessly lost walkers – Kristi and Megan – he treats them as though they were his guests and shows them around a few of his favourite haunts. After a few hours splashing around in a subterranean creek, Ralston leaves the girls and continues on his lonely journey to ‘anywhere but home’. But soon after leaving the girls, Ralston loses his footing on a loose boulder and finds himself trapped, in an upright position, his feet barely able to touch the ground, with his right arm pinned between the canyon wall and the offending boulder that has travelled down with him.
This is already universally known as “that film where the guy chops his arm off”, and this twisted dramatic irony is where the real horror of the story lies. The viewer knows, from the moment the boulder lands, that Ralston will have no choice but to hack off his arm; and there is a hint of voyeurism inherent to the idea of just sitting and watching him squirm for 127 hours before finally handing us his pound of flesh. Boyle is acutely aware of this element of the film, and makes good use of the fact that Ralston was an avid self-publicist with a passion for gadgets, who seemingly never went anywhere without his tiny video camera. From the moment Ralston realises he may never get out of the canyon alive, he records messages to his loved ones and documents his declining health. In one surreal sequence he narrates his story as if he were on a daytime TV show, accentuating the idea that we are – in some sense – taking pleasure in his pain.
James Franco is utterly engaging and strangely entertaining as the unfortunate adventurer. He is forced to hold the audience’s attention on his own for almost the entire duration of the film (even Tom Hanks had Wilson!) While this is obviously testament to the actor’s talent, there is no doubt that the reason this film works so well is because of Boyle’s characteristically racy and visceral style of filmmaking. Combining elements of a ‘music video’ aesthetic with subtle, intimate moments and epic John Ford vistas, Boyle
never gives the audience a moment to tire of the difficult subject matter. And I won’t even begin to describe the stomach churning power of the climactic scene where Ralston slowly hacks away at his arm… you have to see it to believe it.
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