127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010): USA

Reviewed by William Barton. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2011.

127 Hours is the latest film by the Oscar Winning duo Simon Beaufoy and Danny Boyle. Their previous film Slumdog Millionaire won 8 Oscars at the 2009 Academy Awards. 127 Hours has been nominated for 6 Oscars this award season including best adapted screenplay, best actor in a lead role, and best picture. It is currently ranked at number 216 on IMDB’s top 250 films between All Quiet on the Western Front and Rocky.

127 Hours is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, an avid outdoors-man who was trapped in the base of a canyon with little water or food for 127 hours. Aron Ralston is played by James Franco, who gives an eery, but thrilling performance. For those of you who do not know the story of Aron Ralston, the film starts by showing a fun-loving explorer going on his next trip. Soon, he is trapped at the base of a canyon with his arm pinned to a wall. He tries to free himself, but the rock has lodged itself so well that he cannot free himself. Facing death, he must find a way out of his predicament. Although the main character is stuck in one place for the majority of the film, we learn about the nature of Ralston’s relationships with his friends and family.

As 127 Hours went on, deep sighs kept coming from the crowd as the visuals in the film continued to get more and more gruesome. The film’s intense realism kept the crowd on the edge of their seats. The film was mostly shot hand held which gave it the look of something similar to a documentary. Since the film was based on true events, Danny Boyle goes the extra mile to show the gritty nature of what Aron Ralston encountered while his arm was trapped leaving him unable to move.

Although the film focused on telling a realistic story, Danny Boyle chose to take liberties with the sound effects. In one particular scene, Aron is faced with a painful situation. While half of the audience was taking deep breathes and squirming in their seats and the other half sat with their eyes closed, loud guitar dischords- like a squeeling reverb- played as he tried to dislodge himself from the rock in a particularly disgusting fashion. In another scene, Aron must break his own arm in an attempt to free himself. The pops and cracks that come from his arm are extremely loud. From an objective standpoint, the breaks were much too loud, but if one were to put themselves in the same situation, one would imagine the breaks would sound just as loud. The sound for the whole film came from Ralston’s point of view which gave the audience further insight into the struggles and pain that Ralston felt.

Admittedly, even for a manly man such as myself, parts of this film were difficult to sit through. Not because the film was bad, but because some scenes were so breathtakingly brutal. In fact, the film was great. The fact that Danny Boyle chose to take a story that was just one character in one setting for an entire film was enough alone to make me want to watch it. But as the film went on, I discovered that Boyle took an imaginative and inventive approach to a difficult idea for film. His approach resulted in an extremely thought provoking film that will make you want to immediately call your mom and tell her you love her.