His grief and resolve are equally believable, and the power is mostly in his ability to invite the audience to feel as he feels - even if his character is nothing like us - so that the downright horror of the task he chooses and undertakes lands with an almighty jarring punch.
The entire endeavour hinges of course on James Franco's performance - easily his career best - which is both dazzling to watch as a voyeur, but also completely engaging on a human level. Considering the subject matter, and the temptation to go for a straight situational horror, that is no small achievement - and it is crucially a decision that makes that one defining scene all the more affecting, since the sensation is hugely emphasised in the tona context of the film. Director Boyle brings his usual attention to detail and commitment to the craft of creating an aesthetic that has marked the majority of his work, and along with co-writer Simon Beaufoy he deserves the highest plaudits for making the story so thoroughly entertaining. The focus is not on bleakness, but on the strength of human endurance, told vividly and personally to devastating effect. 127 Hours is a situational horror with a vibrant, and almost tragic humanity at its core, and while it could have been a claustrophobic portrait of despair, it feels a lot busier, and intentionally more uplifting than you might have expected. For instance the sequence in which he infamously cuts his arm off is fleeting, and accomplished through suggestion and through brilliant audio accompaniment, rather than through glaring and fetishised overt imagery. For a film that has been derisively reduced to being about one moment by lazy commenters, 127 Hours is a triumphantly rich story, and even though it is a one man show, defined by a horrific situation, it never feels unnecessarily exploitative of that situation. Helpless and seemingly hopeless, he makes a video diary, until he eventually is forced to cut off his own arm to escape. The plot has been massively over-trodden by now, so I'll keep it brief: a mountain climber - Aron Ralston (James Franco) - becomes trapped in a narrow passage when a boulder falls and pins his arm. And in 127 Hours Boyle found a project that met those specifications perfectly: based on the harrowing and astounding story of Aron Ralston, the Oscar winner is available to buy on Blu-ray and DVD now. One thing was certain: whatever he chose would have to be story-driven with an obvious and strong human element running throughout, following the trend of even his most genre of works. The camcorder used by James Franco in the film was the actual one Aron Ralston used when he was trapped in Blue John Canyon.ġ27 Hours is an intense, emotional real life story that is not for the squeamish and earns the number 11 spot on my list of 25 movies to see before Oscar night 2011 bumping down The Fighter.When Danny Boyle walked away with the biggest prizes of 2008 for Slumdog Millionaire, he reaffirmed his status as one of the best directors currently working, and would surely have had his pick of projects. Before shooting began both James Franco and director Danny Boyle were allowed to view the footage in order to accurately portray the events in the movie. Two interesting bits of trivia regarding the video diary from IMDB:Īron Ralston filmed a daily video diary while he was stuck in the canyon the footage has only been shown to close friends and family and is kept in a bank vault for safety.
The constantly changing camera angles and video diary make his journey of mental and physical determination through over 5 days of pain and starvation a captivating tale. The impressive part of 127 hours is that it works.
Only unlike Cast Away where Hanks could move about the island and explore new adventures, Jame's Franco's Ralston is stuck in a fixed position within a narrow canyon. It was much more like Tom Hank's Cast Away where one man carries the entire film for most of the two hours. I expected a large portion of the screen time to be in set up (getting to the point of being stuck) and a significant amount of scenes of what was happening in the real world when they finally learned he was missing. I roughly knew the story of Aron Ralston who got his hand pinned between a fallen boulder and a canyon wall and had to make some pretty tough choices in order survive but I hadn't read any reviews or recaps before going to see it, so my expectations were uninformed.
#ARON RALSTON VIDEO DIARY MOVIE#
A large part of any movie experience is determined by the expectations set before hand.
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