127 Hours

Boyle literally plants you within the film and gets you involved in Aron Ralston’s life as though it was your own

Namrata Joshi

Updated on: 7 February 2024 5:52 pm

127 Hours

Starring: James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn
Directed by Danny Boyle
Rating:

In 2003 Kevin MacDonald made a documentary, Touching the Void, on mountaineer Joe Simpson’s fateful climb (with Simon Yates) of a peak in the Peruvian Andes. On the way down, Simpson injured his leg, dropped into a crevice and was left hanging on the rope in a raging storm with Yates holding on in shock at the other end. Realising they had little chance of survival, Yates had to eventually take the hard decision of cutting Simpson’s rope and carrying on with his journey. However, a gutsy Simpson survived the fall and managed to reach the base camp. It made for an extremely compelling film, not only on the courage and spirit of survival but also the accompanying dilemmas and perceived betrayals.

In the year when MacDonald’s film got released, adventure enthusiast Aron Ralston went through a similar situation in his own life. On a climb in Utah, he had an unexpected fall and found his arm jammed under a boulder in a crevice. The only way out of the trap was to chop his hand off. He did it and Boyle crafts a riveting, exciting yet moving film out of it.

Boyle literally plants you within the film and gets you involved in Ralston’s life as though it was your own. Credit would also go to Franco who fashions Ralston as a loveable, charming and admirable guy. Boyle takes viewers through a gamut of emotions in 90-odd minutes. All through, A.R. Rahman’s soundtrack flows with the mood, feel and tempo. There is the adrenalin rush and thrill pumped up with a constantly-on-the-move camera and split screens. There is the edgy desperation as Ralston keeps chipping away at the boulder with a little pen-knife. The expansive landscape and the claustrophobic crevice dwarf Ralston and there is profound loneliness in his reveries and delusions—the raven, 15 minutes of sunlight and visions of friends and family. In the midst of it all, there is also laughter as Ralston cracks a ‘Made in China’ joke. 127 Hours makes you chew your nails, it sets your heart pounding, breaks your heart and is also life-affirming. It makes you think deeply on how you get hassled by little issues in life when someone out there is braving so much more.

High Fives

Bollywood