It turns out that two great things came
about from Danny Boyle's previous over-baked and lobotomized fantasy,
Slumdog Millionaire. First, the Oscar means he will probably be able
to work for the rest of his life if he so chooses, hopping genres
with every film like contemporary film chameleons Stephen Soderbergh and Michael Winterbottom. Second, was the collaboration with A.R.
Rahman who leads off 127 hours with one of the snappiest pieces of
musical introduction to come along since, well, Shallow Grave or
Trainspotting. Boyle excels at the meld of the visual and musical
rhythm - it screams youth and energy. The music and opening scenes set such an optimistic,
bustling tone for a film you probably know by now will go another
direction at some point. The title card is withheld until that turn
comes, but not before the film spends a bit of time with its lead and
his outdoorsy risk-taking spirit. An early, violent spill off a
mountain bike that might deter the casual offroad cyclist
elicits a giggle, a shrug and a digital camera snap in the embarrassingly
compromised position. The tale of Aron Ralston is one of confidence,
self-sufficiency and frankly narcissistic hubris. Any goofy mistake
is one for the flickr photo stream and likely an amusing anecdote
over beers. Embodied by James Franco, an actor who gets better and
better with every film he is in (you will have to let me know about
that TV Soap opera), his Ralston is the life of the party, even as he
leaves to do something by himself before the party is over. He meets
two girls in while biking around and gives them the (platonic) time
of their lives via a narrow gap in the rocks dropping dozens of meters into a
cave-pool. The girls find him cute but can see that he is lost in
himself leading one of them to remark, "How much do you think we will factor into his day." Someone who knows where this is going might appreciate the films bleak humour. One of the girls asks him, after he mentions
that he is a geologist when not tramping around or climbing rocks, if
he thinks the narrow gap of rock will movie while they wait in the
space. Despite Ralston's pithy response that everything is always
moving (more self involvement) we know from one Werner Herzog that nature
is indifferent and cruel; if it does move, it will not be because you are in the gap, the world does not revolve around the young.
It is probably not a spoiler at this point, there is already a book and the trailer is playing in front of everything at the moment, that Ralston, while rock-climbing by himself in the Utah desert, gets his hand pinned under a several tonne boulder in a narrow gorge with nobody but himself to help him out of the situation before dying of thirst or exposure. So other than the opening prologue, itself loaded with foreshadowing images (a forgotten Swiss Army Knife, the aforementioned bike-spill) the challenge of 127 hours is to make a man trapped in one place compelling for an entire feature film. Boyle and Franco rise to the challenge with verve. A camera placed inside the waterbottle tracks the depleting supply of fresh water and eventually a fluid nobody wants to drink. Boyle favours some extreme close-ups and awkward angles to further visualize the predicament. A miniDV camera where Ralston recorded a video diary of potentially his own slow demise provides ample opportunity for Franco to perform and for the director to change film-stocks. Tracking the daylight and how it plays out in the gorge (offering Ralston only a few precious moments of direct sunlight a day,) big camera pulls out of the slot to reveal miles and miles of rugged and beautiful landscape keep the film as kinetic and provide an ironic counterpoint to Ralston's steady optimism and can-do spirit. Each small victory is climbing Everest and provides a pick-me-up for the next difficult decision or escape attempt. In the mean time flashbacks and hallucinations aim (with varying success) to chart his state of mind, the smashing of his ego and the crumbling of his own selfish hubris. It maybe overly simple to boil the film down to simply a personal admission that "I Need Help!" but there you have it. It is handled a bit less sappy (but no less obvious) than you think. If it takes a British telling an American's story to tell the country that going it alone in the desert is not a good idea, then so be it also. That the film can maintain a sense of humour in this dire, and eventually explicit gory, situation is a mark of its success as a piece of broad entertainment. One of the most witty satirical moments in Matt Reeve's Cloverfield is that as a monster kicked the head of the Statue of Liberty into the middle of Manhattan on a destructive rampage, people still stopped to take pictures and cellphone video.
Proving the thin line between satire and truth is how Ralston takes a fair bit of his dwindling time to ham it up for the camera, acting out sitcoms and other goofery. Is it a deep breath before continuing is attempt to carve his hand out of the rock and a hard place, or is it simply indicative of the terminal case of narcissism that inflicts the 21st century. The height of irony for 127 hours is this. For a film about someone losing their big-head in the face of a situation that was built out of many tiny selfish steps, Ralston stands to be a bit of a celebrity for his own book and the eventual blockbuster success of this film. Perhaps this story is another interesting paradox in American mythology.