127 Hours (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljJM3mTBqJs 127 Hours is a true story of a rugged outdoors man named Aron Ralston. The film takes place in 2003, when he was hiking in southern Utah in a dessert. The beginning shows Aron ecstatic about escaping to the outdoors and drives his jeep to a desert like area with small canyons (some lead to waterfalls) to climb down. He ventures out in the wilderness alone and surprisingly runs into two girls his age, and takes them sight seeing for a while. After they part, he proceeds hiking in the middle of no where, and finds a canyon to climb down, hoping to land in a giant pool of water. Upon climbing down he comes across a boulder wedged between the walls of the canyon, and falls on top of him, knocking him to the bottom of the canyon trapping his right arm in the narrow space. All he has is his camera, a half full water bottle, rope with carabiners and a knife. He tries several times to push the boulder aside or crack it to escape, but he can't. He has to ration his water supply while being trapped so he can survive. The five and a half days he's stuck in the narrow canyon, he reflects on good memories, regrets, family, and love life and goes slightly crazy given the circumstances. The movie is pretty uneventful as James Franco (acting as Aron Ralston) mutters random thoughts and the movie shows flashbacks and images in his mind while enduring this experience. The movie tries to accurately convey what Arons personal experience was every moment he was stuck in the Canyon, though the events are limited. Though it is a struggle to watch the film without falling asleep, it doesn't sugarcoat or add fictional characters to the story of Aron, which makes the story more believable. It's not so much a depressing experience as it shows Aron in a daze, recording a video diary on his camera and even joking to himself about the situation. He laughs, "Sorry mom and dad, I wont be able to make it to my sisters rec idol, because I'll probably be dead." While he's in the Canyon, the camera takes closeups of his face, and not so much his arm caught in the boulder, though the audience knows it's there. At one point, the camera shows the inside of his almost empty water bottle as he drinks from it, giving a sense of extreme desperation. By the fifth day, Aron somehow gathers the strength to come to the conclusion that if he has any chance of surviving, he has to cut off his arm. With the sounds of the bones and flesh breaking, it makes the audience unable to watch or listen to. Eventually he climbs out of the canyon and is more happy to be alive than regretting that he no longer has his right arm. He walks away with a story, an experience, and knowledge, and gratitude for people and things in his life he took for granted before. The canyon scene is always dark with only a crack of sunlight, in a narrow space going at a slow pace. In contrast, when Arons free (before and after) everything seems to move at a radically swift and spontaneous pace, in an open desert drenched in sunlight. This gives the theme that you don't know what you got until it's gone. Though mostly boring, it was a true depiction of what Aron went through as a 2 hour summery of 127 hours caught in a canyon. I found it a moving film.