127 Hours (2010): C

Considering his career-long interest in man’s alternately harmonious and hostile relationship with his environment, Werner Herzog would have been an ideal choice to helm 127 Hours, the story of climber and canyoneer Aron Ralston, who spent the titular duration at the bottom of Utah’s Blue John canyon, his arm wedged between a boulder and a rock wall. On the other hand, the film’s actual director, Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), proves an awkward fit for such material, engaging in hyper-stylized kineticism in an attempt to refract his tale through the very media-saturated filters that Aron (played by James Franco) himself embraced. Opening with a trifurcated screen drowning in pulsating music and awash in hustle and bustle – crowds clapping, running and praying, as well as fast food signs and Aron’s own constantly moving hands and eyes – Boyle immediately establishes the frantic hubbub that defines Aron’s Gatorade-fueled extreme-sports life. Once out in the vast mountainous unknown, Aron bikes hard and, soon thereafter, flirts hard with two girls (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn) he encounters, his digital video and still cameras always at the ready, so that even upon wiping out on his bike, he instinctively snaps a self-portrait. It’s a frenzied life played, recorded and replayed at light speed.

This happy-go-lucky fun comes to a grinding halt when Aron slips in a crevasse and an enormous rock lands on his arm, thereby immobilizing him in a remote hidden location. Rather than switching aesthetic gears to concentrate on Aron’s solitude, however, Boyle maintains his stylistic spazziness. Be it through impressionistic flashbacks, rapid-fire montages, or a habitual need to provide innumerable, largely unnecessary angles and perspective on a given image and scene, the director refuses to allow a minute to pass free from intrusive embellishment. As his water supply diminishes and thoughts of amputation become more pressing, Aron’s fear, desperation and loneliness should take center stage, and to his credit, Franco does his best to express his protagonist’s anxiety, fortitude and regret amidst the sound-and-fury barrage perpetrated by Boyle. Such efforts, however, are ultimately overwhelmed by a flurry of cinematographic and soundtrack gestures (non-diegetic sound effects, ‘70s pop songs, smeary lenses and hazy hallucinations). From start to finish, the director proves so unwilling to let a moment breathe with sustained human emotion, or to linger in the terrifying silence and emptiness that surely filled Aron’s days and nights, that the film winds up operating at a palpable remove.

That disinterest in Aron’s quiet isolation becomes even more pronounced once the film begins dramatizing his memories of parents, an ex-girlfriend, and his unborn son, all of which – along with his first-person videotape monologues – convey the man’s self-imposed, pre-accident alienation from those who cared for him. It’s a theme that’s hammered home with thudding bluntness, such that the inevitable triumphant climax finds Aron screaming, with heavy symbolic import, “I need help!” That final note encapsulates 127 Hours, which, blessed with a true story of an adventurer challenging himself – mentally, physically and spiritually – in the unforgiving wilderness, persistently goes for the neat, tidy and obvious even as its scenario practically demands a more dreamlike, introspective treatment. A scene in which the trapped Aron eagerly awaits a brief touch of sunshine gets at man’s loving/violent bond with nature and history. Yet like Aron spying ancient rock-wall drawings, it’s a moment rendered superficial by Boyle’s surrounding look-at-me tomfoolery, as well as a glimpse at the type of pensive, oblique, quasi-mystical film that a less manic, more contemplative filmmaker like Herzog might have crafted from this amazing saga.

Comments

[Patrican]

Thanks very much. I suspected something like what you describe. You've saved me from walking out of an expensive movie.

[Shearer]

I think that, more than help, Ralston needed a brain transfusion. This is nothing more than the art-house version of "Jackass 3D" (and even the Jackass crew employ safety measures and work as a team). I cannot for the life of me understand Boyle's (and the fawning filmgoing audience's) obsession with this man's foolhardiness and stupidity. Then again, as he showed with "Sunshine," where his team of supposedly highly qualified astronauts behaved like undisciplined idiots until they got themselves killed, Boyle seems to regard human stupidity as essential to drama. Count me out. I'd rather watch Johnny Knoxville and his guys do it for laughs.

[Moab Mike]

I have a suspicion that cinematography and sound track aren't the only licenses taken with the story. The scene in the trailer where Aron and the two girls drop down the slot into the water didn't happen in Bluejohn Canyon. There is no feature like that in the immediate area. It could have happened at Lake Powell, but that's miles and miles away. If the movie is true-to-life that scene only happened in Mr. Ralston's dehydrated, delusional mind.

I'll see the movie in a week or two. If your assessment is correct, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, it will prove sad if the director didn't explore the crushing lonliness that Mr. Ralston must have experienced. I've hiked alone near there, though through much less challenging canyons. I've also explored Bluejohn Canyon with friends. A person can go a long long time down there and the only sounds they will hear are their breath, their footsteps, the wind, and their beating heart. That element alone makes the area either fantastically liberating or utterly terrifying.

Some final notes. Bluejohn Canyon is near Moab, UT the same way Los Angeles is near San Diego. Yes, they are in the same general area and relatively close as the crow flies, but it takes about 2 hours to drive between the two.

[Ed Dornbach]

I enjoyed this film, yet I am ambivalent whether I should have. What would Bresson or Melville have done with this source material?

[Yarkadin02]

A beautifully written review and after having just watched this film I generally agree with the writer. This is not to say that the film is a poor or unsatisfying one... there are some strong scenes and I found the ending cathartic, a relief from the usual nihilism found in modern movies. What bothered me was the superficial treatment of the subject matter and as mentioned the constant barrage of images in places where you'd expect some impact of atmosphere and/or loneliness. Also quite ironic I found is that the film is called 127 hours, yet you barely ever get the sense of time flowing slowly or standing still (which I imagine Ralston had felt acutely in his horrific predicament). Instead you're hammered with hallucinations and flashbacks from the moment he gets stuck to the moment he extricates himself. Another thing: there's a supremely annoying and unnecessary scene where Ralston imagines himself on a television show, a few days after getting stuck. To me stuff like that is just inconceivable, but it's supposedly a true story and the protagonist is an American so who knows...