Dir. Danny Boyle, UK , 2010, 94 mins.
Cast: James Franco , Amber Tamblyn , Kate Mara ,
Review by Francesca Neagle
“This rock has been waiting for me my entire life…”
127 Hours is the enthralling true story of one man’s incredible endurance and courage. But more than that, it’s the story of the human spirit – of each and every individual’s determination to live and zest for life. With fast-paced split-screen opening shots and a dynamic soundtrack to demonstrate this from the off, Danny Boyle keeps us fascinated, horrified and inspired to the end of the film and beyond. We can’t help but wonder in the darkest moments: “What would I do in this situation?” and “Could I really do that?”
With such an emphasis on inward-looking questions, it’s a remarkable feat that this tale could ever have translated from a short story to a screenplay. All the action largely goes on in one immobilised character’s own head and by default in our own. Independent, loveably-arrogant, resourceful, extreme-sport badass, Aron Ralston (Franco) drives to Utah to spend the weekend canyoning in a stunningly beautiful and remote location. He plunges into hidden, glittering, azure underground lakes with a couple of lost attractive female hikers, whom he naturally assists. Leaping easily over cavernous gullies , he’s clearly a man who’s confident going his own way. Then he misses his footing and sliding into a canyon, he is trapped by a seemingly immovable boulder. Ralston moans and roars viscerally, like the trapped wounded, dirty, hungry and thirsty animal he’s now reduced to being. But he’s also a son, a brother, a lover and a friend. And despite some desperately harrowing scenes of physical and mental torment, neither of which ever really seem better or worse than the other, we realise he’s never really alone.
Ralston’s thoughts, feelings and relationships are explored via an apparently endless variety of camera shots, angles and ideas, which amazingly never detract from the intensity of Franco’s performance. The two-man cinematographic tag-team makes the contrasts between a close-up of Ralston’s foot in white sunlight and a breathtaking pull-out of a raw and rugged, reddened landscape even more extreme, enabling and heightening the headiness of the rationality, delusion, hope and despair Franco experiences as the hours and days pass.
We all have our rock and we haven’t shared Ralston’s brush with his particular one for nothing. Whatever challenges we face, we can’t help but realise the life-affirming power of our own relationships with others and that no matter how self-sufficient we may be, we all need help.
