Review: '127 Hours' is intelligent filmmaking

Film: 127 Hours (A)
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara
Rating: ***1/2

127 hours is a gripping adaptation of the book ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’ by mountaineer Aron Ralston who was caught in a near-fatal situation while canyoning in 2003.

After a loosened boulder crushed Ralston’s (Franco) lower right arm while he was hiking across Utah’s Blue John Canyon, a desolate place where no one knows he is, he endures the titular duration immersed in regret, despair and introspection before he decides to amputate his hand with a dull knife.

Given the limitations that crop up owing to its premise, the film would have been ludicrous or incredibly boring in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. Hence, a lot of visual and aural techniques are resorted to in order to keep the audience’s attention piqued. That we know the man survived to tell the tale, doesn’t ruin the experience that is 127 Hours.

The sweeping cinematography of Utah rockscapes with their cavernous depths captures Ralston’s isolation perfectly. The frequent split-screens could be deemed as excessive. Nonetheless, the visuals, which could come dangerously close to being regarded as stylistically overblown by some, are effective in expounding upon the psychological aspect of Ralston’s ordeal.

The almost constant presence of Franco, whether boisterous or reflective, is far from tiresome because of his dynamism even in the grip of despair.

Though his self-performed amputation may prove stomach-turning for some, its symbolism cannot be taken lightly.

AR Rahman, for the film, manufactures a curiously delirious score that is hard-hitting or ethereal depending on where Ralston is or what he is doing.

Usefully, it is pumping and radical when Ralston (or his fevered imagination) is on a roll yet it attains a disturbing hypnagogic quality when he, bereft of his hand, realizes yet again that he is left to his own devices, with scanty resources. Surely this versatility won’t go unrewarded by the academy of motion pictures.

127 Hours contains the kind of storytelling that comes from intelligent filmmaking which makes all the difference to a straightforward narrative whose details were already known by its audience.