Who could have guessed that one of the more gripping films of the year would involve an actor with his hand pinned under a rock, essentially talking to himself for 94 minutes? But that’s the case with director Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours.”
Boyle couldn’t have chosen a more different setting for his follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire,” going from the teeming streets of Mumbai, to the desolate Blue John Canyon in Utah, to chronicle the harrowing true-life survival tale of outdoor enthusiast, Aron Ralston (played by James Franco).
While out hiking in the desert, Ralston takes a misstep and finds himself trapped, literally, between a rock and a hard place – which is also the title of the book on which the film is based – when his hand becomes trapped under a boulder, leaving him stranded alone in the middle of nowhere, with only a small thermos of water. Making matters worse, he didn’t even tell anyone where he was going – a foolhardy decision that proves not only dangerous, but revealing about his personality.
As we learn more about Ralston, the film takes on an almost Dante-esque dimension. Just like in the Inferno – in which the punishment is matched to the sins of the damned – here, Ralston’s dilemma seems to be a metaphor for his desire to be totally alone. The point is driven home by a memory fragment of a past girlfriend’s prophetic warning, “You’re going to be so lonely, Aron.” In contemplating the tragic irony, he states, “I chose this rock. This rock has been waiting for me my whole life.”
It is an acknowledgement that fuels the real emotional payoff at the end when, realizing that he is not as self-sufficient as he would like to believe, he shouts out, “I need help!” It is more than a cry for assistance, is an existential epiphany that no man is an island and that the human person only makes sense in community. It’s a message as old as Genesis: “It is not good that man should be alone.” On a deeper level Ralston’s cry also can be interpreted as a rejection of the false notion of total autonomy and an affirmation of our dependence on God.
As mentioned, Franco spends almost the entire film alone on screen speaking to a video camera, but thanks to his Oscar-worthy performance and Boyles dynamic filmmaking style, “127 Hours” is as riveting as its story is remarkable.
And while Boyle doesn’t sensationalize the film’s gorier details, the bloody climax is extremely graphic and not for the squeamish. I won’t spoil it for those who don’t know how Ralston extricates himself, but it is an ending that will stay with you for much longer than 127 hours.
127 Hours is rated R and contains some crude language, sexual content (including shadowy nudity), and some disturbingly graphic bloody images.
