127 Hours

 

It is little surprise that News broadcasters jumped on Aron Ralston’s story in the way they did. In May 2003, Aron went canyoneering in Utah’s wilderness, only to have his arm irreversibly trapped by a boulder. After five days of struggle his only solution was to take a dull knife and amputate his right arm in order to implement his escape. The story is a testament to the power of the human will. It is also, without doubt a great talking piece. I remember hearing about it on the radio and debating with friends whether they thought they were capable of committing to such feats of human endurance and self-harm.

In short, Aron’s story makes for an excellent 5 minute news story, but does it work when stretched out to feature length?

It works, and it does so with some aplomb, largely thanks to the pairing of director Danny Boyle and lead-actor James Franco. Boyle’s frenetic energy, invention and probing camera are the driving force of the film. Just see, for instance, the camera follow Franco as he dives from a cavern into a pool of water below. 127 Hours has a kind of innovative force at its core that ensures it’s never less than beautiful to look at.

Granted, there are times when Boyle throws everything, including the kitchen sink at the camera (taking this expression to heart, he even shows us three angles of a tap dripping at one stage) in a way that can frustrate rather than animate. Picture a car commercial whose emphasis is on having a rousing soundtrack and fitting as much as it possibly can into its run-time. But as the film’s frantic pacing eases after its first-third to acknowledge Aron’s isolation, I must concede that 127 Hours' off-kilter pace serves a purpose and is worth the payoff.

Aron Ralston has led his life like he’s the star of his own action film. Being trapped in a canyon, miles away from any civilization, is, no doubt something of a wake-up call. He isn’t an invulnerable Jason Bourne type figure; he’s a human-being, all too capable of making mistakes.

Given the nature of the story, 127 Hours is very much a performance piece. It is the story of one man trapped in a canyon desperately trying to engineer his own escape. Yes, Aron does run into a couple of passer-bys and other people do feature in his flashbacks, but it is his presence that dominates the screen. Thankfully, James Franco throws himself with abandon into the role, no doubt aware that the film flies or dies with his performance. He is capable of casting Aron as both an action-hero, adventurer-extraordinaire and a lonely, desolate, hopeless individual.

127 Hours is the story of a man undergoing an epiphany. A young man learns to abandon a sense of independence that often borders on selfishness and accept others into his life. It is, essentially, the story of a man learning to leave a note whenever he goes out. Thanks to James Franco I bought this all the way. Never have the words “I need help”, had such gravitas.

Then, of course, there comes the scene where-in, Aron has to amputate right arm below the elbow with a dull knife. Before he can do this, he has to break his arm so that he can avoid sawing through bone. It’s as uncomfortable as one might expect and only goes to support my overwhelming feeling that if I were placed in Aron’s position, I wouldn’t have the guts or the wherewithal to do what needed to be done.

It’s a testament to Boyle’s directorial prowess that most of the discomfort arising from that scene arises from mere suggestion, rather than any explicit or superfluous focus on the act itself. Despite this, perhaps the biggest compliment I can offer Boyle’s film is that it manages to be both emotionally gripping and physically repulsive – a remarkable achievement.

I have only one question. How on earth did Aron manage to put his wristwatch on with one hand?

BURIED

There’s a scene in Kill Bill 2 where ‘The Bride’ is buried alive. It's tense, exciting and visually appealing and yet the possibility that such a sequence could be stretched to feature-film length never hit me. This brings us to Buried, a film with a neat, if not entirely unprecedented premise. Yet, I’m not sure if this kind of thing has ever been done in such a visceral, unrelenting and uncomfortable fashion. Cinema at its best should transport us away from our own life - be it to a more wonderful world, or, as in the case of Buried to a brutal, nightmarish reality. Indeed watching Buried in the darkness of the cinema as I writhed about uncomfortably in my chair, I had the unsettling sensation that the walls were closing in on me and the air was becoming steadily thicker. Don’t be surprised if when you leave your seat at the end of the movie you find yourself praising some higher power for simply having the ability to get up and leave. Buried is the kind of film that grips you right from the start and doesn’t let go until like its protagonist, you have been shed of all hope.

Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) an American contractor working as a truck-driver in Iraq awakens in complete darkness. Like Paul, we see nothing and can hear only the sound of his increasingly frantic breath as he scrabbles around in the darkness realising the full horror of his situation. He is buried some distance under the ground (though not so deep that he has no phone signal) in a wooden coffin with only a lighter, a torch that doesn’t work particularly well, a couple of glow sticks, a knife, a flask of alcohol and most importantly – a mobile phone. Unlike The Bride, Paul cannot focus all his energy into a punch and break his way out of the coffin. If you haven’t seen the trailer or heard anything about this film beforehand, all you need to know is that Buried is 94 minutes long and that all 94 minutes occur inside the coffin. There need be no further plot analysis – indeed to find out any more may impair your enjoyment of the film.

Buried, like any film of its ilk owes a debt of gratitude towards Hitchcock’s Rear Window, in which Jimmy Stewart’s broken leg keeps him confined to the rear room of his house until the end of the film. Despite having placed these restrictions on the scope of the film (an experiment he would later repeat with Rope) Hitchcock was able to engineer what might be his most suspenseful film. Three years later audiences saw and loved 12 Angry Men, which was set solely in a jury room as the titular men attempt to argue out a verdict for a particularly tricky murder case. In recent years we’ve had Flightplan, Panic Room, Devil and best of all, little seen Spanish thriller Fermat’s Room, all of which keep their protagonists trapped in a fixed location. However, the key point of comparison for this film is 2002’s Phone Booth – an intriguing concept which saw its star Colin Farrell, held against his will inside a telephone booth as he attempted to negotiate his escape without being shot down by the sniper surveilling him.

Buried and Phone Booth share a few things in common. They are both, primarily, star-vehicles. It was in Phone Booth that Colin Farrell first proved he had the potential to be a decent actor. However, more impressive still is Ryan Reynold’s performance in Buried. What’s incredible about the performance is the surprising range that Reynold’s is able to showcase despite extremely limiting extraneous circumstances. Running the full emotional gauntlet without a psychological gambit left unexplored Reynold’s proves here that there’s a future for him in the movies that lies outside playing the Romantic lead in the latest dreary Hollywood rom-com.

Moreover, both Buried and Phone Booth confine their characters and force them to use the phone to attempt to save their lives. Where Buried differs from Phone Booth and a key reason why it is a significantly better film lies in the adept directorial handiwork of Rodrigo Cortés. His camerawork in particular deserves some plaudits – there isn’t an inch of the coffin left unscathed. By fixing the location and having only one real character on screen for the course of the whole film, the director always runs the risk of boring the audience. I can happily confess that I wasn’t bored once; I was too busy sharing in Paul’s fear, hope and desperation. This kind of sustained suspense is a real rarity. Just don't be fooled into thinking that the premise of this film isn't weighty enough to support it's 94-minute running time.