Screen 9 at VUE Islington
When asked on being approached by Danny Boyle to work on 127 Hours screenwriter Simon Beaufoy remarked,
"I just laughed I thought, 'Of all the mountaineering stories, of which there are many, he's gone and chosen the one that can't be told' - a guy on his own who doesn't even move. And, of course that's exactly why Danny would head straight for it. If something's impossible, then he's really interested." 1Indeed the choice of story by Boyle is as brash as ever and due to the well-known nature of it's outcome, poses an interesting challenge for the 54 year old director. Having wiped the floor of the Acedemy Awards with 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle's success has clearly given him certain amount of power when dealing with the Hollywood mogul elite. Just as Christopher Nolan following the success of The Dark Night was given free reign by Warner Bros to make the film he always wanted to make, you can't help but feel that without the Oscar on his mantlepiece it would have been near impossible for Boyle to consider telling the tale of Aron Ralston, a mountaineer who having been caught between a rock and a hard place (literally) has no way out other than to amputate his own trapped arm.
Danny Boyle is that rare breed of British director. His films span multiple genres collaborating with a variety of writers and producers both inside and outside Hollywood, as James Mottram writes "he is seen as the very antithesis of the auteur". 2 Whilst this title may suggest a lack of congruent themes running through Boyle's work, and upon first glance his films do may appear to share little with one another. The notion of entrapment is one such theme Boyle has returned to on a number of occasions, and never with such blatant rhetoric as with his latest. Be it the poverty stricken streets of Mumbai, the Thai prison walls of The Beach or the drug addled squats of Leith in Trainspotting, Boyle's protagonists have always had somewhere they would rather be. This sense of entrapment and struggle for freedom is typically played out by Boyle through an extraordinary range of ecstatic highs and catastrophic lows, think how Rentons passionate sex scene in Trainspotting accompanied by the nifty footwork of Archie Gemmil, is shortly followed by the paranoid hallucinations of his herion overdose. With 127 Hours, Boyle enthrals us with his brilliantly dynamic and heart stopping portrayal of Aron Ralston's extraordinary journey, which in distance is merely a stretch of canyon rock but measured in emotional and psychological discovery is perhaps his most far reaching and universal tale to date.
The majority of column inches written in the build up to this film were of course regarding the amputation scene, which is for all intents and purposes taken straight out of a gore-fest such as the Saw franchise. However to compare it to such a simplistic horror film is to miss the point entirely. The horrific nature of watching Ralston take to his own arm, stems more from the empathy which the audience holds for the lead, built mainly through his insightful and often hilarious monologues with the screen, rather than any of the tomato ketchup gore of the actual amputation. Indeed it's in his direct monologues with the camera where James Franco's acting prowess is given full opportunity to shine. In particular the TV game show role-play which Franco acts out with astute comical timing and knowing self pity is an absolutely gem that breaks the mood of the film perfectly. Interestingly Ralston was initially unwilling for Boyle to adapt his story into a drama piece, "he wanted to do it like Touching the Void. I always said it was an action movie where the hero can't move". 3 This persistence by Boyle to pursue the story under his terms eventually won through to Ralston. Hence the resulting meeting of minds can be drawn from Boyle's ironic use of Bill Withers 'Lovely Day' to accompany the protagonists first morning trapped within the canyon and Ralston naming his own best-selling account of events as 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place'.
With his direction Boyle pulls out all the stops to avoid the potential monotony of spending the large part of the film trapped within the Utah Bluejohn canyon walls, and as a result 127 Hours includes some of the most reverting cinematic sequences we are likely to see all year. From the hallucinations of chef Blue John from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the mammoth figure of Scooby Doo to the quite remarkable flash-flood sequence which as Boyle notes "offers a dynamic deus ex machina, freeing Ralston and allowing him to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend, only to be rudely jolted back to his imprisonment". 4 The film is rich in colour, from the wide shots of the hyper orange of the canyon to the joyous opening split screen sequence of expansive, unified shots of crowds. This is a film that never sways from being anything other than cinematic. It's a mature piece that shows all the skills and ability Boyle has learnt of his craft over the years reaching the point where he has the confidence and ability to take on such a challenging project. In keeping with Academy Awards tradition for handing out Oscars for the wrong film, if there is any film shows Boyle's worth of such an accolade then it's his latest offering and not his last which displays it.
____________________
1 Peter Debruge, Creative Screenwriting, November / December 2010 p. 21
2 James Mottram, Sight and Sound, February 2011 p.21
3 Peter Debruge, p. 23
4 Peter Debruge, p. 22
IMDB / Find Any Film / Rotten Tomatoes / Trailer
The majority of column inches written in the build up to this film were of course regarding the amputation scene, which is for all intents and purposes taken straight out of a gore-fest such as the Saw franchise. However to compare it to such a simplistic horror film is to miss the point entirely. The horrific nature of watching Ralston take to his own arm, stems more from the empathy which the audience holds for the lead, built mainly through his insightful and often hilarious monologues with the screen, rather than any of the tomato ketchup gore of the actual amputation. Indeed it's in his direct monologues with the camera where James Franco's acting prowess is given full opportunity to shine. In particular the TV game show role-play which Franco acts out with astute comical timing and knowing self pity is an absolutely gem that breaks the mood of the film perfectly. Interestingly Ralston was initially unwilling for Boyle to adapt his story into a drama piece, "he wanted to do it like Touching the Void. I always said it was an action movie where the hero can't move". 3 This persistence by Boyle to pursue the story under his terms eventually won through to Ralston. Hence the resulting meeting of minds can be drawn from Boyle's ironic use of Bill Withers 'Lovely Day' to accompany the protagonists first morning trapped within the canyon and Ralston naming his own best-selling account of events as 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place'.
With his direction Boyle pulls out all the stops to avoid the potential monotony of spending the large part of the film trapped within the Utah Bluejohn canyon walls, and as a result 127 Hours includes some of the most reverting cinematic sequences we are likely to see all year. From the hallucinations of chef Blue John from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the mammoth figure of Scooby Doo to the quite remarkable flash-flood sequence which as Boyle notes "offers a dynamic deus ex machina, freeing Ralston and allowing him to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend, only to be rudely jolted back to his imprisonment". 4 The film is rich in colour, from the wide shots of the hyper orange of the canyon to the joyous opening split screen sequence of expansive, unified shots of crowds. This is a film that never sways from being anything other than cinematic. It's a mature piece that shows all the skills and ability Boyle has learnt of his craft over the years reaching the point where he has the confidence and ability to take on such a challenging project. In keeping with Academy Awards tradition for handing out Oscars for the wrong film, if there is any film shows Boyle's worth of such an accolade then it's his latest offering and not his last which displays it.
____________________
1 Peter Debruge, Creative Screenwriting, November / December 2010 p. 21
2 James Mottram, Sight and Sound, February 2011 p.21
3 Peter Debruge, p. 23
4 Peter Debruge, p. 22
IMDB / Find Any Film / Rotten Tomatoes / Trailer
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