Boyle's direction is fearless

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2011)

This is based on the true story of how mountain climber Aron Ralston (James Franco) was travelling across the canyons of Utah and had his arm trapped under a boulder. After being stuck for five days Ralston used little more than a blunt knife to cut off his arm and escape. This film examines the ordeal as closely as possible, commencing with a montage of Ralston's rapid lifestyle, to when he meets two female hikers and then his drop into the canyon. From this point the film immerses the audience into Ralston's space, rapidly visualising many of his thoughts and his emotions. He remembers his family most fondly and a sense of regret is one of the major fragments of Ralston's personality that emerges from his nightmare.
One of the most surprising thrillers of last year was Buried, a minor thriller set entirely inside a wooden coffin. It was an effective exercise in claustrophobia that relied heavily on coincidences. Danny Boyle's 127 Hours, adapted from Ralston's own book "Between a rock and a Hard place", is similar in being set almost entirely in one location, with almost a single actor too. Its ambitions are however undeniably more sophisticated. Boyle has been periodically interested in the velocity of the lives of young men. And he uses that as a basis for an intriguing question: how will someone so regularly mobile cope physically and emotionally by no longer being in control of their body? He attempts to answer this through a deliberately hyper-kinetic visual style. At the beginning the thumping beats of music combine with rapid cutting and split screens to project an image of Ralston's lifestyle. He's the sort of guy thrilled to have his heart beating out of his chest. His energy is infectious to others too though. His introduction to two hikers briefly suggests that he has enough charm to still connect with people when he wants to. After some cave diving one of the girls he meets says playfully: "I don't think we figured into his day".
This is merely the surface of Ralston though as Boyle is intent on taking the audience deeper into the adventurers emotions. Boyle's direction, through some unconventional camera-work by Slumdog cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, is fearless. He gives us point-of- view shots from inside a water bottle so that we can see Ralston's tongue licking out the final drops from inside. He cuts to an imagining of a plentiful Gatorade container and to an extreme close-up of Ralston's face under a cloth. I have rarely warmed to this hyper brand of filmmaking as its long been used by action directors to substitute narrative for momentum. There's more feeling to Boyle's work though: he succeeds in making us feel the limitations and the desperation of this space. He achieves the realisation that every bit of water, every dropped tool and each catch of sunlight is crucial for survival. It's a credit to Boyle and Franco that the film pulls off most of its gambles. There's a lighter scene where Ralston verbally interviews himself, like on a talk show, complete with canned laughter. It's a surprisingly funny moment but Franco's internalisation of his longing and regret is particularly notable. Ironically, the film's most touching moment is also it's most restrained. Franco is given the appropriate amount of time and space to bring genuine sincerity to Ralston as he speaks into a video camera, apologising to his parents. I found that to be the film at its most poignant.
Inevitably, there are some missteps with this unorthodox brand of storytelling. The flashbacks to the family are mostly touching but they also veer dangerously close to sentimentality too. There's a slightly cringing moments where Aron remembers his sister playing the piano with him and he hazily says under his rock: "Way-to-go sis". There's also the strange recurrence of a child that is certainly not Aron's and not himself but perhaps an imagining of his own future son. Most crucial though is the absentee of the aftermath. We learn that Ralston married after three years and continued with his sports but surely there were darker and more isolating aftershocks to come. Not even the fearless Danny Boyle can take us there.