9/7/10

127 Hours (2010)

Seeing this on the last night of Telluride Film Festival was a spectacular end to being in that beautiful place. I had listened to Danny Boyle James Franco and Aron Ralston speak on a panel discussion about the role of nature in film. Director Boyle does not consider this movie to be a nature film, even though it all takes place in the Blue John Canyon of Utah, not too many miles away from Telluride.

Based on Aron Ralston's book Between a Rock and a Hard Place, this is a tale about survival after a hiking accident. Ralston is portrayed by James Franco, who carries the film with monologue and action--full of drama, silence, loud sound, comedy, self-reflection. While the book goes into detail about people back home trying to locate Ralston, Boyle chose to make the film entirely about Ralson's experience in the canyon during those 127 hours back in 2003. He was a pleasure-seeking young man who worked as an engineer. An adrenaline junkie and outdoorsman, he may have been a bit arrogant and careless, but he was no novice in the wild. He took off on his bike one sunny day equipped with loud music through his headphones, a movie camera strapped to his handlebars, snacks and water. We see him speed through the dry terrain of the west, doing what he loved until a mishap with a large boulder leaves him pinned under rocks. Caught in the menacing, ominous, threatening, indifference of nature, he finds a bit of poetry as he records himself on camera, often sober in an attempt to leave a dignified impression for those who may discover it later on. He embraces mortality, knowing his predicament appears to be unsolvable, but his psyche and soul unravel--leading him to a way out.

The film is essentially about one man's destiny with a rock and the existential transformation that occurs as he resorts to desperate measures to survive...eventually liberates himself by sawing off his arm with a dull pocket knife. The film takes the viewer on a sensory and emotional roller coaster with Ralston via James Franco's ability to convey the hero's journey. Ralson is the first to admit that the big mistake this event was his failure to tell anyone where he was going. The film is careful to not let the audience leave without making a statement about the important issues of outdoor safety.

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