Painful and thrilling experience, meaningful and inspiring story ...

Rating: 10/10 (26 February 2011)

Danny Boyle's multi-layered "127 Hours" works on the three levels that make a film great in my opinion: spiritual, physical and emotional. It's a riveting experience, elevating to the extreme the notions of determination and resistance. It's a thriller, a character study, and a powerful story of courage and perseverance, even more inspiring because it's true.
Despite its fairly short length, the film feels longer than that, and this is one of its main strengths. Danny Boyle's scrupulous directing creates an exhausting empathy towards Aron Ralston, the protagonist, portrayed by James Franco, in what I consider the best male performance of 2010. Empathy to the extreme as you feel like your own arm is trapped under that boulder. Free enough to move your body, having a deceptive impression of freedom, but still trapped. And when the boulder crashes on Aron's arm, his mind is clear despite the pain and so is his spirit. His self-preservation encourages him to move the boulder and never the amputation comes to his mind as an option. And, we can't imagine this cool and good looking guy will condemn himself to such a handicap. But this is because the point is still not survival. Just give him some time  and time is all we have. "127 Hours" is like a prison movie with a rock as a prison cell and a Utah canyon as a jail, in the middle of nowhere. And Aron Ralston, the loner, the young free spirited climber as the prisoner, condemned to 127 hours of painful endurance, both moral and physical.
I said "loner" but in fact, Aron is not alone, there's one second major character in this movie, inanimate but significant: the handy cam. The handy cam adds to the realism of the story, it's like the real cam of the film, not James Franco playing Aron Ralston, but Aron Ralston filming himself. Secondly, the cam is a way to convey a message that might as well be posthumous, it's his testimony. And last but not least, it plays the same role as Wilson the volleyball as the last sacred link with the rest of the world. It makes him talk, see himself like in a mirror, feeling he exists. The cam works even when it doesn't, and this is one of the most clever points of the films. We all have this strange confused feeling that we're being watched, and I don't mean paranoia. I mean when you feel you're a part of a film with an audience, you ask yourself "what if I was watched?" and try to act as normally as possible. The movie intelligently illustrated that feeling which, as ludicrous as it may sound, is important because preventing you from insanity by trying to maintain your reason and common sense. When Aron was hallucinating, or starting to flirt with some early steps of insanity, all his memories came to life. When he was about to please his sexual organ while watching the image of a woman's breasts, he automatically restrained himself, maintaining a form of dignity as if his family or friends were really watching.
Never losing it  this is Aron's physical and spiritual struggle, if his mind cracks up, if he breaks down under the pressure, his body is lost. And the body must be preserved, through an efficient symbiosis, to keep the spirit sane. Aron must drink even if it's pee while fantasizing about a fresh orange juice. And this is the point of the editing, one of the film other strengths : "127 Hours" is punctuated with entertaining montages featuring what happens inside Aron's body, when he drinks, the bubbles are like a refreshing injection of life in a suffering body, so when the water is going low  we experience the dryness in our throats. These montages work as incredible exercises of contrasts, insisting on the location, through an extraordinary cinematography that eliminates any chance of being saved by other people. Indeed, as it goes on, as we see Aron's face getting paler and thinner, while the "others" are probably having fresh beers, fun and sex. We get deeper in the concept of loneliness, Aron got on this .... alone, and alone, he'll go through it.
And this last point leads to one hell of a disturbing climax I won't even try to describe how graphic it is. But as shocked as I was, I couldn't help but cheer for the blood splattering, the bone snapping, every grunt, every shout, every tear, every move, because each one was like a victory against the adversity of an undeserved punishment. And this is why the movie is not just thrilling and entertaining, it's inspiring on a deeper level because it made me think that if I was in this case, I would have probably considered that removing this very arm that helps me to write these words, as a victory. This movie not only works in an emotional and physical level, engaging all your senses, it's also one of the most endearingly spiritual achievements of these last years. It's a redemption story of a character, guilty of a free-spirited nature that detached him from sacred bonds like Family, friends  Aron's deliberate carelessness was his flaw, the one that made a simple "oops" omission : not telling where he was going, a fatal mistake, turning the prophecy of his ex-girlfriend :"You're gonna get so lonely" into a reality. This experience was Aron's redemption.
"127 Hours" is about destiny, as I said sometimes we feel like we're watched, like living a film written by God where every fate is like a life-changing plot device. In Aron's case, reality exceeded the fiction, and Danny Boyle managed to create a powerful story about a new inspiring cinematic hero who tasted one of the most painful meanings of the word "lonely", the 127 hours in hell was his lesson, and our inspiration.