The Best Movie Critic   +  sdff

127 Hours: Denver Film Festival Review

127 Hours is a movie about soul power. It’s about the strength, hope, and comfort we as humans receive from commune with other humans. It is because 127 Hours is couched in this uplifting thematic conversation that 90 minutes of a guy stuck in a hole in the ground with his arm trapped under a rock is exhilarating to watch rather than a bore.

Danny Boyle’s newest somehow manages to be even more Capra-esque than Slumdog Millionaire. 127 Hours is Danny Boyle’s It’s A Wonderful Life. In It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey turns away from those who love him, and ends up having to be talked down from killing himself, eventually learning to take strength and hope from his loved ones. In 127 Hours, Aron Ralston (James Franco) isolates himself from humanity, traveling to Robber’s Roost Canyon, UT to hike some of the most remote territory in the West. He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. His quest for ultimate isolation from humanity is the precise reason he ends up in this deadly quagmire, and it’s only by discovering his soul-need for other people that he can gain the strength to do the impossible – to cut off his own arm to escape his trap.

The actual cutting off of the arm is less gruesome than I imagined it might be. I’ve seen too many zombie movies I suppose. It’s not cutting into the flesh that makes the audience squirm. It’s when Ralston takes the plunge and cuts into his arm’s nerve cluster. Ooeerrrrhhhgggghhhh, it’s hard to watch.

This movie is very much of and for the Facebook generation. Granted, Ralston is a survivalist, and the first thing he does after getting stuck is to take stock of his gear and set up a harness so he can sit comfortably. But the second thing he does is turn on his portable video recorder and start taping himself. Unlike Capra’s, Boyle’s movies continue to explore the most hyper-modern moviemaking methods and technologies. Aggressively digital cinematography, shakey-cams, split-screens, laser-fast cuts, that funny thing from Requiem for a Dream where they attach the camera to the actors head. They’re all here, but they’re not shoehorned in. It’s an organic, comprehensible style. Boyle is proving to be crucial to the artistic development of our generation’s visual aesthetic.

There are no pristine landscapes in 127 Hours; they are all disrupted by Ralston’s deafening clatter. However, the movie doesn’t present this human noise in a negative light. At the beginning and end of the movie, Ralston stumbles across some Native American rock paintings, a reminder that we’ve always been broadcasting human noise on so-called pristine landscapes. 127 Hours suggests that we should take soul power from these reminders of community and humanity.

Full disclosure, the audience at the 127 Hours premiere I attended was one of the best audiences I’ve had the pleasure of sitting with. They were feeling this movie in a big way. From the 2nd level balcony at Denver’s Ellie Calkins Opera House, you could see waves of squeamishness ripple through the crown as Ralston began his amputation. When he freed himself, there was clapping, cheers, screams, and whistling. With a 2000 person audience, it was spine tingling and tear inducing. It helped that Aron Ralston himself introduced the movie (he’s a Boulder, CO resident). The real Ralston is charming, nerdy, winning, and a little weird. At one point, he threatened to reenact his story in front of the screen while the movie was playing, like a Rocky Horror revival screening. Witnessing the real man enriched James Franco’s phenomenal performance. He really nailed it. After the movie, I attended a midnight screening of Trainspotting, and surprise, surprise Danny Boyle showed up for an intro, direct from the airport. He looked more than a little tired and disheveled, and gave his charmingly ad libbed intro slouched against a row of seats with a Stella Artois in hand. What I’m saying is that the evening itself may have contributed a little to my enjoyment of the movie. That happens. However, I would be extremely surprised if after another screening or two of 127 Hours it still doesn’t rank as one of my favorite movies of the year and my favorite of Danny Boyle’s career.

-Ben