So I went to see the guy who chops his own arm off movie. Yeah, I know, not a very good opening line, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the dialogue that surrounds a movie and speak to your reaction to it when crafting a review. And people are talking about this one in terms of it being the “the guy who gets trapped under a rock and cuts his own arm off” movie. “I’ve heard that people have passed out in the theater from watching it; did you hear”? So yeah, let’s start by addressing the film on that level. Yes, the main character is trapped under a rock for most of the movie, yes it does end with him cutting his own arm off, yeah it was pretty gross, no I didn’t feel like passing out from it. But I think there are bigger questions that people should be asking themselves about this film before worrying about the gross out ending. Is it enough to see this one just for the mutilation and the freak out factor? No, I’d say not. So, how is the build up to that moment? How effective can a climax be when it’s already been spoiled for nearly 100% of the audience? How entertaining can a movie about one guy stuck down in a hole alone be? When you start really looking at these questions the story being told starts to look like a real handicap. In trying to juggle these problems and make a successful film out of them director Danny Boyle takes on a pretty difficult task. At times, saddled with a very small story with very limited scope, Boyle takes on the appearance of a kid forced to give a speech in school even though he hasn’t done any preparation. He’s got this one measly note card of stuff to work with and ten minutes to fill, what kind of BS is he going to come up with to stretch this thing out? Luckily Boyle is a very talented metaphorical slacker high school student and he uses every flashy, stylish, eye catching filmmaking technique in his formidable arsenal to give one of the best speeches in the class.
The film opens with a montage of crowd scenes. The image is often split into three frames. People march in straight lines, crammed shoulder to shoulder, in cities, at sporting events; you get the picture. It’s a clear juxtaposition to the solitude that will come later in the film. Our main character, Aron Ralston (James Franco) is always moving, never slowing down, never taking a moment to appreciate the things around him or the people in his life. He gets a phone call from his mother early on and chooses not to call her back. He spurns communication. It’s not that he’s purposefully callous or insensitive; he just has a sort of ADD affliction that causes him to constantly seek out new forms of stimulus. Other people can’t seem to keep up, so they get left behind. We’re shown a bunch of hustle and bustle, we’re introduced to a character and watch him neglect communicating with others, and we’re given this material deliberately. These are the things that our protagonist will be cut off from later on. By gorging on these images early on, that separation will be all the more highlighted for us later when we’re stuck down in that rocky crevice. We’ll be primed to better feel the predicament that Ralston is in. We won’t just sit there and gawk at him, but we’ll instead put ourselves in his shoes. If Boyle weren’t successful in that goal, if he wasn’t able to make us empathize for the Ralston charatcer, then this really would be just a shallow freak show of onscreen misery and mutilation. And, in my opinion, that wouldn’t have been a very successful film.
And so for the first act we get multiple images layered on top of one another. We get constant rock music, constant motion, running, jumping, mountain biking, crashing. The results are similar to those of a music video or Mountain Dew commercial. In his constant quest for new experience, new stimulus, Ralston spends his weekends out in the desert, biking, swimming, spelunking. In the one sequence we get that includes things like other characters, dialogue, and interaction, Ralston comes across a pair of young, female hikers (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn) who have wandered off of their trail. He promises to get them where they need to be going and takes them climbing through a tight squeeze crack in the middle of a mountain. You’ve probably seen the sequence in the trailers. In order to freak them out he lets go of the wall and goes plummeting down the crack. The girls freak out. Is he crazy? Is he dead? What just happened? It turns out he knew of a pool of water down below and this starts a montage of scantily clad co-ed swimming. There’s laughing, there’s yelling, there’s good times. The scene is effective in what it sets up. The climb is claustrophobic and worrisome. It builds tension to the climbing mistake he is going to make later on, which you know is coming. The swimming scene is light and fun, it’s a moment to let the tension in your body go and relax before the ordeal that you’re about to endure. It’s the last time we’ll see Ralston happy or worry free for quite a while. After he says goodbye to the girls he heads off on his own and it isn’t long before a crucial misstep leaves him trapped at the bottom of a different crevice, his hand trapped between the wall and a giant boulder that fell on it. At this moment we finally get the title card of the film ‘127 Hours’. By this point you’ve forgotten that you didn’t get it in the first place. It’s an effective flourish that sets the film apart and it’s a hard-hitting reminder about what you’re about to be in for. It wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful if placed at the beginning of the film in a traditional manner. Here you really have to digest what that title refers to. After the title card we get the first silence in the film. The camera pulls above Franco, out of the crevice and high up into the air. It hovers there showing us just how much empty land separates him and any sort of human contact or help that might be coming his way. Gone are the moving, the yelling, and the blaring music, and it’s a jarring transition. He’s only just been trapped and already Boyle has given us two “oh crap, this is bad” moments. This is setting up the stakes of the story. This is how you craft a film with some gravity. This is how you keep people engaged in your narrative.
At this point in the film I was with it, but I was also worried. Boyle is always a visually flashy and inventive director, and many times it is a positive of his work, but other times I’ve thought his visual fetishes got a little out of hand and negatively impact things. While we spend all of this time alone with James Franco down in this secluded place Boyle has to pull out a lot of stops to keep us engaged, and some of them started to get a little borderline for me. At nighttime the temperature drops down to punishing cold, and we’re presented with this information in the form of a temperature meter in the corner of the screen. Instantly I was brought back to negative memories of the video game sequence in The Beach. That sequence, where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character traipses through the jungle in a pixilated, 16 bit image while we get video game sound effects and power meter coloring the proceedings, didn’t work and completely took me out of that film. It was meant to show the character’s degrading sanity, and how his modern worldview would process that oncoming insanity, and in that way it is very similar to what we get in this film, but here the effect is much better. Perhaps that was Boyle experimenting with an idea, and this is him perfecting it. Here I was nervous, but never disappointed. Boyle skirts the line of ridiculousness, but he never crosses it. One of the main differences is that in The Beach the sequence came out of nowhere and here he was inserting these sort of stylistic elements into the very first frame. In that film there were contrasting tones that didn’t seem to mesh well at all; here there are no such problems.
And not only do they not cause problems, its Boyle’s fetishes that end up making the film. The temperature meter, the countdown to how much water he has left, the countdown of how much battery life is left in his camera, they all puts the focus on mortality. You’re always in the moment and dealing with concrete things. Consequently the film takes on an “enjoy the moment”, “appreciate the little things” theme. But it’s never directly addressed; it’s never cringe worthy, sappy, or annoying. Boyle presents you with the stakes and then allows you to read into them as you will. Except for when he doesn’t; but that works too. When Ralston’s water is running down to nothing and he would do anything for a drink Boyle gives us a montage of images from soft drink commercials. Spritzing water contrasts against sunlight and multi-colored drinks pour over dry, thirsty lips. The results are maybe cheap, but undeniably effective. I licked my lips, I instinctively grabbed for my soda. I was Aron Ralston. The film is very immersive in this way all the way through. During the more gruesome moments you try to remind yourself of the camera crew filming everything and the special effects that make it all possible in order to keep yourself from freaking out about watching the uncomfortable stuff, but after a few seconds you always find yourself sucked right back in and experiencing things on the surface level. And a large part of that is because you already know what’s going to happen in the film, so your expectations create a sort of built in tension. Normally knowing the end of a film going in would be a negative, but here it is turned into a positive. The anticipation of when he’s going to start working on that arm always keeps you engaged and moving forward through the story. Is it coming up next? Is this going to be it?
But Boyle’s flashy direction is only half the story of how 127 Hours manages to keep you entertained while watching one character in one location. The other half is the performance of James Franco. He’s better in this than in anything I’ve seen him in so far, and I imagine there will be talk about handing him some trophies once awards season rolls around. One of the few things that Ralston has with him under this rock is a video camera, and he tries to keep himself sane by periodically talking into it and documenting his experience. Late in the film this sort of pseudo narration reaches its climax when an at the end of his rope Ralston starts deliriously interviewing himself on a made up talk show. It’s the biggest bit of entertainment in the film and Franco knocks it out of the park. He’s manic, he’s dorky, he’s fun, and watching his frustrations come out in a series of increasingly insulting questions posed to himself becomes a very human moment where we begin to get a sense of what this experience has done to him, how it’s changed him, and what we should take away from it as an audience. Soon after this Boyle cranks up the volume on the surreal imagery and Ralston enters full on hallucination mode. Suddenly all of Ralston’s family and friends are around him, interacting with his plight. Memories of past experiences blend seamlessly into his present. Locations change without warning. Pieces of furniture from his childhood home show up in his little cave. There is no real sense of how much time is passing. Ralston’s physical pain intersects with the emotional pains of his past regrets. These sequences raise a very interesting thematic question to think over. If you were trapped all alone down in the Earth for days at a time, who would be down there with you? What memories and which people are you going to take with you into the grave?
When he starts breaking his arm and hacking away at the flesh it is pretty horrific, but not to the point of being exploitive or purposefully trying to go for shock value. The camera shows us what happens, but it doesn’t linger. The gore seems realistic, but not over the top. There is blood, a lot of blood, as there really would be, but it doesn’t spurt dramatically or artistically. It isn’t CG, it’s not there to thrill. At this point you’ve learned to feel for Ralston’s character, you’ve learned to like him despite his faults, and his plight has even made you reflect a bit on your own life. It’s only after all of this is achieved that you are really ready to watch him do what it takes to get out of that hole. And it’s only after he’s experienced all of this himself, until he’s traveled the full gamut of emotions to be felt and possibilities for escape, that he would be able to muster up the will to get through this task. And that’s the real trick of what Ralston does. It’s not making the decision to cut off your arm that’s the hard part, it’s having the will to get through the entire thing without giving in to shock or despair. It’s that will and how he was able to come to achieve it that makes Ralston a unique character and makes his story one worth experiencing. And that’s why you have to sit through the entire amputation. Without doing it you wouldn’t fully understand his experience. This isn’t a stunt; it’s an integral part of the story. And when he gets out, when it’s all over, it’s a moment of pure joy. It’s a catharsis that the viewer couldn’t share if he wasn’t forced to sit through all the nasty parts. Joyful music booms over the soundtrack, the smile on Franco’s face beams; this is a true emotional climax that very few films can match. The rest of what happens, the wrapping up of how he makes it out of the desert, it’s not important. That one moment of freedom is what the whole film is about, and if it had ended there I would have walked out of the theater on a great big high.
