Film Review | 127 Hours

Any story that asks ‘yes, but what would you do?’ is automatically involving. That’s what great art should do, right? Question the status quo. Unsettle our moral boundaries, prick at our complacency.

You could say that this has been true of stories since the beginning of storytelling. Medea murders her children in retaliation against the shameful way she’s been treated by her husband, and our heart goes out to her a little bit, even if this makes us uncomfortable. Would you do the same? Probably not, but how can you be sure? Gustave Flaubert’s Emma Bovary commits adultery to escape a dreary marriage, and as fate metes out her retribution, we’re left wondering whether our misguided heroine really deserves it, and whether we would have done anything at all differently.

Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours – a true account of climber Aron Ralston (James Franco)’s struggle to survive after his hand gets trapped by a boulder in an isolated Utah canyon – features neither maternal rage nor marital dissolution, but its concerns remain equally human, and often just as unsettling. At such close-quarters, with inevitable death looming on the horizon, we can’t help but see something of what even Shakespeare hinted at in King Lear, as the disgraced monarch strips down and embraces his madness to the moon, with the windy hearth howling away.

These are certainly big themes that could have slipped through the fingers of any lesser team of filmmakers, but the fact that Boyle and co. have just received Oscar nominations in some of the most important categories – Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Actor; as well as Original Score, Song and Editing – should at least hint that they got some of it right.

The premise itself is a challenge for a mainstream studio blockbuster for reasons you’ve probably already guessed: it takes massive directorial cojones to risk millions on a story about a static character in a static setting. But to anyone familiar with Boyle’s backlog (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionare) this concern is likely to be shot down before it even surfaces. And in fact, the split-screen opening credits sequence – buzzing with music and bustling crowds, juxtaposed against Aron’s giddy preparation for a familiar but nonetheless exciting trek through the plains he loves so much – shows nothing if not unmitigated stylistic confidence with otherwise limited material from the word go. There’s always a risk that these kind of hijinks will just lead to adolescent ‘MTV editing’… but again, the (claustrophobic) premise actually works to keep this in check.

But if the two key players on the project are Boyle and Franco, the effort is definitely split 50/50. Because were his performance any less than compelling, the entire thing would fall apart. As it stands, Franco confirms that he’s pulled a Di Caprio (or should that be Hartnett?) – once a teen heartthrob (recall him in the Spider-Man trilogy and Tristan and Isolde), he has matured into a brave character actor who doesn’t shy away from tough roles.

Here, he can simply cut no corners. Hell, he isn’t even heroic enough to channel famous heroes (Hollywood or otherwise) – Ralston comes off as a bit of a childish goof at the beginning, which reassures us that however he emerges from all this, it probably would not be through any reserve of near-supernatural bravery or strength.

Boyle juxtaposes the day-to-day trials of staying alive with refreshing inventiveness. Aron weighs his options at the beginning, emptying out his – very noughties-kid – rucksack, noticing with alarm how closely he must ration water and deciding to film a video journal while his camera’s battery lasts.

Consider this a fair warning: what you will see will probably disgust you – Boyle depicts the Aron’s physical quandary with an unflinching eye (think of the more compromising moments of Trainspotting’s latter half). But it’s the tenderness of his psychological turmoil, and his gradual overcoming of it, that make the film such an engrossing experience.

In a cinematic landscape littered with gimmicky 3D, it’s sobering to see such visceral filmmaking at work. Rest assured, it’s more than likely to make you wonder what you would have done, were you in Rolston’s sand-soiled climbing shoes.