Eugene weekly., February 10, 2011, Page 27, Image 27

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BY JASON BLAIR
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The adventurer who cut off his arm to save his life
127 HOURS: Directed by Danny Boyle. Written by
Boyle and Simon Beaufoy. Cinematography, Anthony
Dod Mantle. Music, A.R. Rahman. Starring James Franco.
Fox Searchlight, 2010. R. 94 minutes.44211
T
he next time you’re tempted to use
the expression “I’d give my right
arm for that,” consider the story
of Aron Ralston. Ralston is the hiker who,
using only a dull knife, cut off his arm
after a boulder pinned him in a canyon in
2003. At the time, the story resonated as a
shocking act of survival, a testament to grim
willpower so extreme that the logistics are
hard to conjure. For the morbidly curious,
there is Ralston’s memoir, Between a Rock
and a Hard Place, but a fi lm adaption
seemed unlikely until, with a faint whiff
of inevitability, director Danny Boyle
entered the picture. Although the story
presents dramatic challenges aplenty —
namely, the Castaway problem of an actor
performing alone for an hour — Ralston
in many ways is the classic Boyle hero, a
reckless but relentless survivor in a world
of numb indifference or outright violence.
From Trainspotting to 28 Days Later,
Boyle’s affection for frenzy seems only to
deepen, along with a frenzied approach to
fi lmmaking that can feel like an end in itself.
When we last saw Boyle, he was packing
the allowable limit of melodrama into the
creaky vessel that is Slumdog Millionaire.
This time, his mode is gritty realism all the
way. If you’re the type that can stomach an
amputation scene but not a lot of ponderous
backstory, fear not: Ralston (played by
James Franco) reaches the desert by the end
of the title credits. 127 Hours is a cheap thrill
told swiftly: Aron goes mountain biking,
meets two girls, fi nds a swimming hole,
then scampers away with a hearty wave
and, once he’s out of earshot, dislodges a
boulder that will pin him to a canyon wall
for fi ve days. His hero stuck, Boyle resorts
predictably to, well, Boylerplate, a set of
visual gimmicks and tricks to emphasize the
pain and isolation of Aron’s situation.
As Aron, Franco is literally left alone to
his devices — a watch, a canteen, a utility
tool and some rope — and I’m happy to
report that the actor’s sly sense of humor
helps enliven this story of near-death. Talk
about the method approach: If that’s not
actual urine Franco is drinking (he’s been
peeing into his empty water bottle) on day
four, I’m a champion free climber. Franco’s
best scene is a mock self-interview set to an
audience track. His mind is going the way
of his body, and Franco works the pathos
effectively from the scene.
But in a movie crying out for fl ashbacks,
Boyle overdelivers. In some, the images
are too brief to be meaningful, while in the
developed sequences Aron reveals himself
as a jerk. The trouble with 127 Hours is,
we don’t know him as anything else. After
demonstrating all the ways Aron is not like
us — ultra-fi t, aloof, even emotionally cruel
— how can we possibly relate? He’s a rock
star, if you will, but in 127 Hours, he’s not
someone we should care about.
In every sense, we don’t go anywhere
with Aron once he’s trapped beneath the
chalkstone rock. Boyle evokes the fatigue
and the frustration of the predicament
but not the agony of facing a slow death
alone. We see Aron’s crushed arm and his
chapped lips, and we register the change —
Franco ably communicates the slippage into
delirium — but we don’t feel it to the degree
we should. And while the zeal with which
Aron fi nally saws off his arm produces a fair
amount of blood and tissue, the amputation
is a desperate and grizzly sequence, proving
that to feel the loss of something, we fi rst
have to care about it.
Toward the end, Aron hallucinates a
roomful of people — presumably, everyone
who matters to him — and even they
don’t look surprised, let alone concerned,
at the turn his life has taken. Shouldn’t
we register the potential loss, even if they
don’t? Boyle’s visual style leaves so little to
the imagination — dream sequences go on
way too long, camera placements seemed
designed to impress — that the impression
is he’s always directing. The good news
is, just like Aron Ralston, you survive 127
Hours. I just hoped to emerge a little wiser
from it.
ew
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EUGENE WEEKLY FEBRUARY 10, 2011 27