127 Hours opens with a montage in split screen, set to “Never Hear Surf Music Again” by Free Blood. Different, rationally unconnected images from around the world move together in concert, all in synchronization with the same beat. The idea is clear: that all life on Earth moves together with a singular energy, and that our protagonist, Aron Ralston (James Franco), is possessed of it, or at least looking to become in tune with it through his love of extreme sports in the outdoors. For nearly any other movie, this would be an omen of intolerable pretension, for nothing sinks a ‘great director’ faster than an assumption that he (it tends to be a he) will be able to satisfyingly answer ‘big questions’ over the course of a single two-hour movie. But Danny Boyle manages to reverse the trend of post-Oscar slumps and turns in a film that manages to climax in something that the cinematic slate of 2010 has been otherwise entirely lacking in: an epiphany.
Ralston starts out his fateful weekend in May of 2003 innocuously enough. He sets out into the desert of Utah with only enough resources for the time that he plans on being there, meets up with hikers Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn), and takes them swimming. Soon thereafter, while attempting to traverse a narrow canyon, a rock supporting his weight breaks off and both go tumbling to the bottom. His arm is then pinned underneath the rock, and he is faced with a choice similar to the one of so many Saw characters: fork-and-knife amputation, or certain death.
Strictly speaking, 127 Hours cheats. Unlike the similarly-themed Buried, which stays in its location throughout the entirety of the film’s running time, Hours strays as Ralston’s mind strays, incorporating memory, fantasy, and outright hallucination into its largely stagnant narrative. Boyle has never been known as an especially subtle filmmaker (his Trainspotting was a hit largely because it was so able to simulate the effects of prolonged drug usage), but having to channel himself entirely through the mind’s eye of a single character has given his aesthetic a focus and power that it didn’t even in 28 Days Later. The simultaneous degradation and enlightenment of Ralston is stirring to watch (a scene in which he acts out all characters of a talk show to a personal camcorder is particularly effective), but it is Boyle’s hunger for new images and seeming inability to sit still that allows us to understand what he’s going through, and share in the experience that he’s having.
Lacking much in the way of actual forward progression, Boyle wisely makes the antagonist of the story not the physical elements opposing Ralston, but his own personality that thrives on isolation, and the decisions that led him to this point. In a series of flashbacks, Ralston is able to reflect on his upbringing, a failed relationship, and the future that he wishes to have. Even when voice-over is resorted to, it’s still pungent and reflective of the lengths that Ralston is going to to preserve his own sanity (a tremendous tribute to James Franco’s performance, which could very well be the best by anyone this year). Towards the end, he suggests that the rock, through its millions of years of erosion, was waiting for him, and that through his ongoing alienation of the people close to him, he has unwittingly but subconsciously chosen this fate (further amplified by the fact that he didn’t tell anyone where he was going, thus completely preventing a chance of rescue). A delirious choice of words, but a brilliant visualization of a subtext that film has struggled with ever since there have been film-makers with access to enough money to get ahead of themselves.
Whether or not you find Ralston’s quest for life meaningful is fairly subjective (some completely reasonable people probably won’t be able to get behind a film that features a man drinking his own urine), but one thing is not: unlike other Oscar contenders of this season, this is not a film to be contemplated, but a film to be felt, and to be savored for its abundance of images and spirit.
"127 Hours" opens November 5, 2010 and is rated R. Thriller. Directed by Danny Boyle. Written by Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy. Starring Amber Tamblyn, James Franco, Kate Mara.
