In what might be the most beautifully shot Best Picture nominee of 2010, 127 Hours establishes Danny Boyle as a king of symbology from the opening triptych sequence that gives offers examples of technology, religion, neon-laden businesses, devices of our consumption and a lone Aron Ralston (James Franco) driving a car.
Solidly edited, the images pit Ralston’s sole being against collective masses: fans cheering at a sporting event, their arms – almost punnily – waving with exuded joy and celebration; dozens of Muslims kneeling in prayer unison; droves of consumers who ebb and flow through McDonalds to increase the number sold from billions to trillions one happy, toy-filled box at a time.
These images are not only beautiful but rather telling in that they themselves create a contradiction: one that establishes the benefits and enjoyment of collective endeavors like sporting events, religion, and dinner; however, they also showcase the individualist drive culture – primarily Western culture, in which “people […] tend to overvalue their own skills and overestimate their own importance” (source). This notion of David Brooks’ can be seen not only in Ralston’s solitary driving and packing for his excursion but also the variously illuminated fast-food signs that sprout from the highways on which brake-light flickering cars travel.
Each advertisement speaks to a collective purchase, but an individual financial venture for the proprietor. The market of fast-food itself is often rooted in the individual in that these chains offer quick portions of semi-sustenance for those on the go with something more important ahead of them. Likewise, the car is often symbolic of personal space in a collective jungle ready to swallow each individual between the hours of 9a.m. and 5 p.m, an individual bubble that protects you from other drivers and conversations, a vacuum that provides the illusion of privacy if you should choose to sing along with the retro-80’s marathon that interrupts the morning commute.
All of these contrasts are illustrated in the first four minutes of the film before the entire frame focuses on Ralston preparing for his excursion to the dessert where he intends to mountain bike seventeen miles and canyoneer through his “second home,” and it is here that Boyle applies a more subtle symbolism to 127 Hours as he utilizes the soundtrack, overlaying scenes with Free Blood’s “Never Hear Surf Music Again,” an upbeat duet that contradicts its rather somber title by posing the evolutionary quandary of what makes us different from animals, offering that there “must be some fucking chemical / chemical in your brain that makes us different from animals / makes us all the same.” Here, Boyle has asked a question that he has partially already answered by illustrating our abilities to create and cultivate business, religion, and technology. He also offers the opposite by exhibiting various collective activities, and given the well-documented tale of how Ralston ultimately escapes the canyon with his life intact, Boyle uses dramatic irony to show that we can “take [this chemical] if it makes [us] numb, take it if it makes [us] calm,” take it to remove an arm.
127 Hours is not an exercise in making the audience cringe, although the self-amputation scene has preceded the content of the movie and birthed misguided expectations and fear of the visceral. Now, I can’t lie: the three minutes in which Ralston frees himself from his hard place is not easy to watch, but our knowledge of what is happening creates far more anxiety and nausea than anything on screen. There’s blood, but there has not be; there are screams, but there would be; and he doesn’t remove his arm easily as if there were a katana blade resting on a rock ledge above Ralston’s head. The truly spine-tingling moments come from Franco himself, his eyes twitching, the apprehension with which he severs a guitar-string tense tendon with a dull utility blade on a “stocking-stuffer” multi-tool, and his dedication to freeing himself while we hope “some fucking chemical” is coursing through his veins, making the excruciating pain just the least bit bearable.
What’s most fascinating about 127 Hours is that we know the climax, yet we are invested in Ralston because Boyle and Franco together weave a film that really doesn’t have any place in the conventional Hollywood landscape, one that often shies away from one-person performances, but 127 Hours provides a bit of temporary amnesia when Ralston’s reality seamlessly transitions to hallucination and dreamlike states as he spends hours praying for water until the sky finally opens up and provides a drop or two that slowly builds to a thunder-storm and deluging crescendo, satiating his thirst, filling his bottle and miraculously lifting the boulder that grips his hand, providing a cathartic release for the audience and a potentially happy ending until our burden of dramatic irony snuffs the spectacularly happy moment, and as we watch Ralston crawl to his vehicle and escape down a dark dessert highway, we embrace it because we are sharing in his temporary moment of euphoria before he wakes up in a barren gullet that has “been waiting for [him his] entire life.”
After exploring our individual and collective desires and questioning the primary difference between humans and animals when it comes to survival, 127 Hours makes us ponder the theory that life flashes before our eyes before we die or when we are on the precipice of death, and then makes us contemplate that moment before you die if it is stretched to five days, and the brutal knowledge of your own mortality screams louder and louder with each passing minute, but you’re the only one who can hear it.
DYL MAG Score: 7
