127 Hours Review

127 Hours, a gut wrenching and stirring true story of a lone mountaineer trapped in a ravine for over 5 days with his right arm pinned to the rock wall without any possibility of salvage is what this 1 hours 35 minutes flick all about. Perhaps, the most energetic and commendable directorial efforts made by director Danny Boyle, the movie televises an act out version of the true incident of Aron Ralston, a hiker who suffered this horrendous fate in 2003 while canyoneering along Moab, Utah.

Aron Ralston, a typical American snob with an usual footloose outlook towards life goes on mountaineering near the deep and meandering canyons of Utah. Struck by an erratic accident in his attempt to climb down a deep isolated crack down the surface, a boulder dislodged, crushing his right arm against the rocky wall having him stuck in the place for the ensuing 5 days. Flooded with trepidation, he makes successive efforts to wedge, haul, roll and heave the rock with only disappointment and failure in the outcome. With a bottle of water and a bite of food for sustenance, he goes on with his failed attempt to scale the rock with a Chinese, blunt unitool. As his water runs out, he resorts to drinking his own urine and occasionally blood as the only alternatives.

As delirium inundated his thoughts with racing pounding heartbeats, he assumed that death was impending and inevitable. He inscribed his name and supposed death date on the rocky wall and started recording videos in his handicam bidding goodbye and apologizing to his family. Impatient with unswerving agony, he finally resolves to amputee his own arm with the knife of the unitool, using the pliers for sinewy tendons. After a lengthy span of unthinkably agonizing operation he breaks free of his arms.

Finally at the climax, after accomplishing a 8 mile long hiking through the deserted canyons under the scorching heat, he finally receives help from a group of tourists luckily sited around the place. The end of the movie pictures him as a changed human being with success still on the crown as he continues his mortal combat.

The movie circumspectly pictures the excruciating pain, mental trauma and psychic crisis that he experiences during his entrapment. It veers around men’s fundamental prerequisites for survival as the character suffers from hunger, bodily pain, mental constrain, carnal appetite, emotional emptiness and craves for deliverance as he embarks on desperate measures to emancipate himself from predicament as his final attempt for survival. With the ultimate approval and salutation to the “Survival of the Fittest” theory and human bravado, the spotlight is concentrated on man’s dependability on the earthly essentials to sustain his mortal shell.

The director has made use of every symbolon possible to manifest human’s unconquerable forceful will to live. The fallen boulder has been portrayed as Nemesis that strikes hard when the victim is least prepared mortifying his conceited superhuman confidence thudding him back to the consciousness of his mortal limits. The flying bird atop is the representation of liberty from captivity that in the due course accentuates and act as a catalyst to up swell his indomitable desire to live. The undefeated spirit of man finally wins over the repugnant destiny through inexplicable suffering that brings him to the point of realization of the greater meaning of his life.

Boyle has very diplomatically shifted the focus from human limits of pain and endurance to an overt condemnation of the American way of living in particular, and modern man’s dilemma in general. Living an offensively self-centric and secluded life with an intolerable arrogance and prejudice, the movie establishes that man is himself responsible for his downfall. The fact that Aron had snubbed his anxious mother’s phone calls, alienated his forlorn lover and ignored everyone to the point of bigotry have bit by bit contributed to his quandary.

The film is essentially a one-man show with a speedy initial. The subsequent course is very slow and slacked at times as the director presses on to inject old memories, hallucinating apparitions and steady pinch of guilt and repentance surging high in the character. Other characters barely share the screen that exposes the movie to sluggish dallying. However, the arm amputation part was highly disturbing and repelling with a lot of bloody scenes that has seen severely criticized and was highly distressing to watch. Though the director could have cut short such a brutal scene, he chose to keep it intact to express the dreadful pain and torture experienced by the protagonist.

Actor James Franco has done an appreciable job and evolved as a much prudent actor with his role as a funky American explorer in the movie. The movie has witnessed not only a remarkable change in his straight looks, but also in his acting skills which can only be expected to develop and enrich in future. The visual effect is also very convincing and impressive giving the audience no scope for skepticism.