127 Hours -- More Than a Disarming Film

Many years, someone I knew who had seen The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino's Oscar-winning film allegory on Vietnam, was asked what it was about. "Oh, it's about a soldier who blows his brains out," was the succinct reply.

Well, actually no, The Deer Hunter was about much more than that, if one cared to analyze it beyond the obvious. But many films over the years have become known for a single aspect or scene (think "Bob&Carol&Ted&Alice" or "Portnoy's Complaint"), overlooking the work's deeper attributes.

There is a similar shorthand about a film currently on the local screens. Danny Boyle's 127 Hours tells the story of Aron Ralston (shown above), an adventurous hiker and outdoorsman whose arm is pinned between a canyon wall and a rock. He is trapped there for several days until he rescues himself in a most agonizing, courageous and unthinkable way.

I will skip the obvious story detail for now. I want to tell you instead about how the film begins, with Ralston's hurried exit from his job and his home to go off into his own little world, the outside world of rocks and trails and pools of water. In this beginning, Ralston encounters a couple of young women hiking the same Utah rock formations that he is. Ralston introduces them to a shimmering underground pool that they would not have found without him. Yes, this is Aron's world, a world that exists only in the exterior. The pool is cool and deep. Aron, on the other hand, appears to be quite shallow.

Soon after leaving the girls, Aron fins himself in his dilemma. He climbs into a deep crevice. He first tests the footing of a rock at the entrance. It seems secure under his feet -- after all, as he had observed earlier, these rocks had been there for millions of years. But as the poet Robert Burns noted, the best-laid plans of mice, men and climbers gang aft agley. The rock falls into the crevice and improbably traps him against the wall by his arm. He is stuck there for days, facing a seemingly certain death, until he frees himself by cutting off his arm -- as it turns out, ingeniously so -- with a painfully dull knife.

This is the plot turn that everyone seems to know. However, if you go to see this film -- and I heartily recommend that you do -- jus for this spectacle, you may overlook the real genius of Danny Boyle's film-making. Boyle's masterpiece and best-known work, Slumdog Millionaire, took viewers on a breakneck view of life in the slums of India. In 127 Hours, Boyle instead takes us on an inward journey of a man who had focused only on the Great Outwards. With his subject confined to a single space, the camera and the screenplay are forced to look at Ralston and his somewhat self-made jail. We learn from Ralston's ruminations about how he has neglected others in his life: The mother whose phone message he ignored. The ex-girlfriend who presciently said that he would be a lonely man one day. The co-worker who was only a blip on Ralston's self-absorbed radar. Ironically, his self-centeredness helped trap him, as other people may have known where he was if he had only reached out to them.

Ever-resourceful, Ralston uses his tools to survive and perhaps even document his ordeal. He records his travails on his video camera, creating a message to his parents, telling them (perhaps for the first time?), that he loves them, just in cse he doesn't survive this ordeal. He scratches his name on the canyon wall, perhaps believing that he would indeed escape this situation.

The smallest conveniences become a treat for him. He comes to appreciate a daily 15-minute does of sunshine on his leg as though he is feeling it for the first time. He looks forward to the daily flight path of an eagle, one of his few companions even over his head. All of these reactions are captured in James Franco's nuanced portrayal of Ralston, a performance that is a revelation of this talented young actor.

But when he rewinds his video camera, Ralston gets a glimpse of what he may have been missing in his life. The girls left a message for him at the pool on his video camera, and he learns that they could see through him almost as soon as they met him. It is an insight he himself has never had.

The actual escape scene is enthralling. Yes, many of us have heard that people fainted in theaters at the sight of Ralston's amputation. However, it is entirely tasteful and artful. Through the use of prosthetics and the craft of film-making (the sound of Ralston's escape may shock you more than the sight of it), Boyle tells you all you need to know about the amputation.

Roger Ebert in his own review that 127 Hours is "an exercise in conquering the unfilmable." That is true in so many ways. While Boyle captures the vast beauty of the expanses of Utah, he also narrows his focus to the small space that Aron Ralston occupies, and then goes even more deeply into the soul of a troubled man who finds his way out of more than one confinement. It is a breath-taking cinematic achievement.