127 Hours

"127 Hours" is the story of a man who cuts his own arm off in order to survive being trapped in some remote corner of the American Southwest.  Now that sounds like an Internet shock video that people would only watch drunk on a dare, then make reaction videos on Youtube.  What makes the whole movie so disturbing is that this isn't just some shock video using cheap special effects, it was actually done by a real person in a "triumphant true story".  Impressively, this movie is actually really good, overcoming its unusual subject manner in such a way as to also create a new genre all by itself.

There haven't been many movies like "127 Hours".  Few filmmakers would bet everything upon the single performance of their leading man, James Franco.  Indeed, the vast majority of this movie takes place in a single location, essentially the same scene.  Worse, the storyline is something that typically would only be covered by documentary programs such as "I Shouldn't Be Alive".  Basically this movie has to take an extreme survival story documentary, dramatize it, and somehow or another do it well.  There of course have been films depicting extreme survival conditions before ("Alive" comes to mind), but no film has depicted an incident where a person has survived impossible odds all alone.

The movie definitely works.  Danny Boyle manages to both horrifying his audience with awful scenes of self-mutilation and depict the single worst possible situation for a person to fall into, but also lifts us up.  For a movie whose subject manner essentially amounts to how random disasters can fall down upon us without warning, its surprisingly inspiring.  "LOVE IT."

A lot of Oscar-Noms are about people overcoming severe adversity.  "The King's Speech" has its hero overcoming stuffy British traditions, "Black Swan" has its heroine overcoming her own sexual discomfort, and "127 Hours" is about its hero overcoming a big rock.

James Franco is definitely one of the most interesting actors in Hollywood.  His career has had some bizarre turns in the last few years, even since blowing his first big chance at being an A-list leading man in 2006.  Franco largely started off in everybody's mind as Spiderman's better looking and more likable friend, but he worked himself up using his natural charm to central roles in what were supposed to be career builders.  However, "Annapolis" sank*, "Flyboys" got shot down, and as for James Franco's small appearance in a 2006 horror movie, turns out that movie was "The Wicker Man" remake.  ...Less said about that the better.  But luckily Franco fired his agent, grinned his teeth during the awful "Spiderman 3" that he was contractually obligated to appear in, and went on to better things, like the hilarious stoner comedy "Pineapple Express".  Then he proved he could do hard drama by taking a key role in the Best Picture nominated "Milk".  And now he's here, with a Best Actor nomination under his belt for his work in "127 Hours".  He won't win (Colin Firth has this one in the bag), but its still an honor.

Franco plays Aran Ralston, a veteran rock climber who takes his weekends to rush out into the desert to run around and love life.  Aran rides cross country in on his bike, runs down gullies nobody has ever explored before, and picks up a couple of chicks for a nice swim in an underground lake.  Unfortunately that wild spirit winds up getting his arm crushed literally between a rock and a hard place.  With little water, dry desert air, and a slowly dying arm, how is Aran ever going to escape?  Worse, the only knife he has is Chinese-made crap that won't even cut through his arm easily.

Cue a whole lot of high-pitched noises representing pain, a technique from "Pi" that Boyle has borrowed here.  I'm a person with a severe fear of needles (I almost cried when I donated blood) and I just couldn't look at the screen during the worst moments.  Hell, I had to shield my eyes and look away during the bloodier parts of "Black Swan", how the heck am I going to sit through this one?  Of course, this is pretty weird considering I'm a person who loves gory horror films... but if the flesh being mutilated actually has weight and meaning, I turn into the whiniest little baby you'll ever see.  Thank God movie theatres are dark so that nobody could see me whimpering.  This movie can be pretty rough... really really rough.

Of course, throughout the entire movie, Aran is not actually alone.  He has his flashbacks, of which there are plenty, including even one pretty trippy flash forward to after he escapes.  Then there's his camera.  In a pretty elegant technique to create natural monologues, Aran talks into his camera repeatedly to his loved ones who he assumes will find this footage along with his dried-out corpse.  The camera is a window into civilization, Aran never actually is completely lost to the world.  Its for that reason that this movie opens with a three-way split-screen showing random moments of modern society.  Aran may be out in the wilderness slowly dying, but he's still connected to that world through his technology and his memories.  As time goes by, Aran starts to force himself into a zen-like state of calm where he can hallucinate to better times, like getting naked in the back of his truck with his girlfriend.

Look out for Scooby Doo in the funniest moment of any movie I have seen in at least two years.

Danny Boyle keeps his movie looking visually impressive through the use of the aforementioned triple split-screen, but also through musical choices.  Every song picked for this movie is dead-on perfect for the moment Boyle is trying to paint for us.  The ending song especially completely fits the movie's tone with scientific precision.  Since Boyle was the director of "Slumdog Millionaire", a film with one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard period, he's really proving to be a really great musical master.

For weaknesses, I'd say that "127 Hours" suffers somewhat due to its hero's total isolation.  He lacks a major character for him to bounce off of, making his trials one-sided.  I wish he could hallucinate a friend for him to talk to (though I can see why the director would want to avoid psychological horror).  Without any other major relationship, Aran's plight exists purely as a plain old survival story, there's no real character growth.  I guess he's learned to be better prepared when mountain climbing, but sadly the biggest moral to this film is "always bring a hammer".

I can't really say that "127 Hours" is one of the best movies I've ever seen, if not because of any particular major weakness, but just because I've seen so many great movies.  Just looking back at this blog, even in the last two months I've seen so many wonderful movies.  Its hard to come up with any reason why "127 Hours" is weaker than say "True Grit" or "The King's Speech".  I can only be thankful that the final decision there isn't mine, its the Academy's.  Good luck there.

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* "Annapolis" did such a bad job in depicting life on the US Naval Academy in Annapolis that the navy sent out a memo telling its personnel to avoid seeing the film, and if they did go see it, leave their uniform at home, just so that everybody would know 100% that the navy had nothing to do with it.  Luckily nobody actually saw "Annapolis" and just rented "Officer and a Gentlemen" again so these measures were unnecessary.