Intense, harrowing, and amazing

Rating: 10/10 (28 October 2010)

This movie is the reason I don't go camping, hiking, or engage in any outdoor activity other than golf. I don't care how bad I play, I have never once been in the position to even consider cutting my own arm off to get back to the clubhouse.
That being said This is an incredibly intense, rough, and powerful film that is by no means easy to watch, but it is quite good.
If you don't knew the story, Aron Ralston, an avid outdoors-man, mountaineer, hiker, biker, all of that, goes off for a weekend ride and exploration without telling anyone where he's going and had the worst possible thing happen to him. No, he wasn't killed or sodomized by hill folk, a rock in a cave he was climbing gave way, pinning his arm to the wall of the cave. In the middle of nowhere, out of view, and running low on supplies his case seemed hopeless until he made the realization that "I have a great tourniquet." Oh, and it's a true story.
This film focuses on the 127 hours from when he falls to the moment he makes a decision that most people couldn't even consider making. What you have here is a person, faced with a dire situation, no food, little water, unable to even turn around, having to jerry rig a climbing harness just to sleep, seeing his life for what it is, the good and the bad. This film presents a man laid bare and shows what you learn about yourself and life when it appears you will lose it.
The film itself is extremely well made. Danny Boyle pulls out as many stops as one can when dealing with a scenario that renders the camera immobile for a majority of the proceedings. Visually, he seems to be locked into his "Slumdog Millionaire" film grammar. It has that look and feel, the rich colors, the slightly slowed action, rewound scenes, flashbacks to small details we missed the first time, but the thematic elements keep it from feeling like a retread. He mixes a very stylized editing and grandiose establishing shots that show the vastness of the landscape with shaky hand held tracking shots that make you feel personally involved.
What I found most impressive was his use of sound. Not only to convey the isolation, but, more impressively, to communicate the intense pain of a self preformed amputation. The use of the camcorder, not only as source for on screen footage but as a second character, is incredibly affecting, and allows James Franco (in the performance of his career) to show the emotional swings from a forced joy to borderline insanity, and finally into the determination to live that would drive a man to such action.
This is not an easy film to watch, but it is not the people fainting at screenings histrionic affair that some are making it out to be. What it is is a very honest and real portrayal of what happens when you are confronted with losing everything.
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