127 Hours Review : Ball-busting fantastic

127 Hours

Director : Danny Boyle

Writers : Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy

Music : AR Rahman

Cinematography : Anthony Dod Mantle

Editor : Jon Harris

What goes for the film : Everything…everything has a purpose…and everything is done with flair

What goes against the audience : Interval breaks…if you’re in India

Cinemaa Opinion : This is the work of sheer genius

Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, AR Rahman, Anthony Dod Mantle, Jon Harris, James Franco, the endless rocky terrain of Utah, the Man v/s Nature genre. If you think you know what to expect, be prepared for a surprise and 90-odd minutes of sheer cinematic genius. Danny Boyle exorcises the ghosts of Slumdog Millionaire with a superlative, genre-bending effort that grabs you by the vitals from start to finish and leaves you gasping for more. The subject of the film, mountain climber Aron Ralston has gone on record stating that apart from the initial setup of the film, the rest of it is accurate to an almost documentary level. And it speaks volumes about Boyle’s cinematic genius that he pulls off a story about a man stuck Between a Rock & a Hard Place (the title of Ralston’s autobiographical account of the tragedy that the film’s script has been adapted from) without compromising in the least bit on his characteristic kinetic style. Not anymore would Trainspotting remain the default first film to be named when Boyle is talked about.

127 Hours hits top gear from the word go with a rousing title track composed by John Pugh & performed by Free Blood. Ralston (James Franco), a carefree & careless adrenaline junkie sets out to conquer the Blue John Canyon (the dramatization of the name a sublime nod to the erstwhile inhabitants of the ravines – Butch Cassidy & his Wild Bunch). On his way, he converts two young girls into his brand of adventurism – the only time Boyle & Beaufoy take a liberty with the facts – in an edgily scripted & beautifully shot track. The track establishes Ralston as supremely confident about his familiarity with the rocky terrains he calls his second home. Leaving the two behind in awe of him, he forges ahead as if programmed, till a boulder comes loose under his weight, leading to a deep drop and culminating in his right arm trapped between the boulder and the ravine. And that’s beginning of 5 humbling days where Ralston battles & befriends nature while gaining the wisdom that many of us fail to gain even in 5 decades.

Bulk of the film is restricted to a single location and a single character – a definite handicap for a genre that thrives on sentimentalization of the situation and a change in the protagonist’s world-view through fresh insights gleamed from the new surroundings he finds himself in. In this case, there was no room for fresh insights due to a complete disconnect with anything remotely animate (save for a raven flying above with an unerring daily frequency – symbolizing Ralston’s impending death) and even an iota of sentimentalization would have echoed like highly amplified melodrama given the inherent stillness around it. Boyle transcends this handicap with a stroke of genius – he turns genre conventions upside down by infusing a thin but pleasant layer of light & detached humor above the stark situation (turning even the ominous raven into a thing of joy) and gets Ralston to introspect and revisit his attitude as a device to bring about the change in attitude. Even the introspection part was slippery ground though, prone to sentimentalization, but Boyle avoids it like the plague, consistently staying true to the mood he has set for the film. Ralston is neither a hero nor a victim so far as the film is concerned, it just portrays a situation and a person’s reaction to it.

127 Hours wouldn’t have been what it was but for the able marshaling of resources by Boyle & James Franco’s terrific performance. Boyle uses AR Rahman’s brilliant score to optimum effect, blending it with the silences & Ralston’s monologues like a master painter mixes various nuances of the same colour. Anthony Dod Mantle shoots the film evocatively, keeping it bright throughout. He starts with grandeur-laden shots of Ralston commencing his journey into seeming oblivion and the sequence where he’s free falling into a pond with the two girls and smoothly moves into edgier territory once Ralston is stuck. He’s equally at ease playing to the gallery and creating those sublime visuals that’ll simply refuse to die from one’s memory for a long time after having seen the film. Jon Harris complements his partners with his supersonic editing that never loses sync. But the real star is Franco, who relives Ralston’s experience on camera as if he were just being himself and in the process, makes you live the 127 hours as though you were stuck right along with him. You squirm when he’s in pain; you rejoice when he gets that faint hint of sunlight in the dark, damp & cold crevice; you think with him as he goes about using every tiny resource he has to break free from nature’s prison and you feel dejected every time his attempts fail. And when push comes to shove in the battle against nature, you feel yourself teaming up with him, pulling at the tug of war in unison. Don’t be surprised if you walk out of the theatre with a feeling of numbness in your right arm – I did.

But what truly sets the film apart is Ralston’s transformation from his carefree self to an attitude more in tune with his responsibilities & relationships. It’s not a huge philosophical transformation but bits and pieces of wisdom that go deep below the surface in terms of character arc. Boyle and Beaufoy script this part with profound simplicity that has WINNER written all over it. There’s not even the faintest hint of preachiness (another genre-bender) as the two depict Ralston’s near-death experience without romanticizing it. The climax of Ralston’s self-realization makes for a riveting cinematic experience, intense yet lucid, disturbing (for there’s a bit of Ralston in all of us) yet soothing (for the recourse to reason is not that difficult). The realization is not a random stroke of awakening, but a layer by layer examination of who & what Ralston is – something that makes seemingly inconsequential tidbits from the earlier part of the film tie up so beautifully with the larger picture. And the denouement with factoids about Ralston’s life post the incident create a far deeper impact than similar closures to other films based on true stories.

The film leaves one in complete awe of Aron Ralston – a very human superhuman when surrounded by mountains. He still is, continuing his exploits with a jarring memory of the incident that would never leave him, a wiser man albeit. It also leaves one in bigger awe of Danny Boyle. Words just can’t do justice to this feat of immaculate feat of filmmaking, hence the circumspect tone of this piece. Go feel it.