127 Hours

In 2003, some dude named Aaron Ralston made some stupid decisions. He felt invincible in his youth, physical capability, and knowledge of the terrain he was visiting, and felt no need to tell anyone that he was setting off alone into a rocky wilderness. This film is about how stupid he was. However, it’s not just about that; it’s also about emotional reflection and the human desire to survive.

James Franco plays Aaron the thrill-seeker, dashing head-long into peril without much caution at all. He first meets up with a couple babes who’ve lost their way and has a joyous time with them for a while in a subterranean pond, then sets off to “Blue John” to do something I guess, it’s never really clarified. It doesn’t matter anyway since he never gets there. While navigating a narrow passage he dislodges a rather large rock which pins his arm to the side of the passage. He then goes through several stages of disbelief, situational analysis, despair, excitement, alternating manic/soulful reflection, and dire decision making while slowly losing precious water, but never his will to live.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge what happens next, so I’m just going to go ahead and say it. Dude cuts his arm off. With a pretty dull, cheap multipurpose tool, because he forgot to bring his Swiss Army knife. First he has to break his two arm-bones though, which is almost harder to watch than the cutting part; the sound wasn’t quite as sickening as I thought it might be, but it was very loud, giving a good idea of the pain he must have experienced. Even better though I thought was the sound made whenever he touched a nerve; I think it was something like a screeching electric guitar. Very evocative of sharp, searing pain. I’ve heard that the whole scene has made people faint; I didn’t have a problem with it but my viewing buddy said he had to cover his eyes for some bits.

The rest of the movie was pretty awesome too. There were quite a few funny bits, like when he starts going a little nuts and does a mock talk-show with his portable camera, interviewing himself and pointing out what idiotic choices he had made to bring him to his situation. There was a frequent use of three-way split-screen to show all of the thoughts going through his mind, which worked quite well, and the music was pretty damn amazing. Aside from the technicality aspect though, the greatest part for me was the joy of finally extricating himself from the rock; for some reason I feel like I can relate to that sort of situation of being stuck and finally breaking free, but I don’t know why. It was just invigorating to see that small prison finally snap.

I haven’t read Aaron’s book, but I probably will at some point. It just seems like it would be thrilling. This movie certainly was. Hats off to Danny Boyle.