127 Hours (15.)
Directed by Danny Boyle.
Starring James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Clemence Posey, Kate Burton, Treat Williams. 94 mins
Everybody likes a challenge: pushing the barriers, exploring your limits, pulling a fridge of cold beers the length of the Great Wall of China etc, anything that gets you a book deal or a spot on the after dinner speaking circuit.
The recent trend for filmmakers is either making films for as little money as possible or making them in the smallest, most confined area imaginable with the minimum of cast i.e. Buried (man in a box) and Frozen (three people in chairlift.) Danny Boyle’s follow up to Slumdog Millionaire is from this how-can-they-possibly- make-a-film-of-that genre. It’s the true story of a man stuck in a remote crevasse when a giant boulder falls and traps his arm.
One weekend Aron Ralston (Franco) takes his dinky little bike and goes riding and jumping and leaping around the Blue John Canyon in Utah. After the thumping, energetic opening 15 minutes, that establish the situation and Aron’s character with expert economy, he slips and finds himself in an absurd and deadly predicament.
The film has a tension deficit. We already know he survives, how long he will be stuck there for and thanks to all the pre-publicity most everybody knows that it required a Gruesome Act to get free. Once he’s stuck it’s a matter of how to fill the remaining 80 odd minutes/ 127 hours. How will Boyle convey the loneliness, terror, despair and physical torment?
Well, mostly he doesn’t. Even though its star is now trapped and unable to move, the movie is still leaping around all over the place, firing dream scenes, split screens, flashbacks and hallucinations at the audience. If Scorsese was a verb I’d say Boyle scorseses the hell out of it, it’s a visual tour de force.
Which is great but if you are going to look into the darkness, you have to be prepared to hold its stare. This film flinches immediately; its sticks on it headphones and heads back to the warmth of some comforting certainties: love, relationships, companionship and family.
Touching The Void, a similar tale of improbable survival against the odds, strikes at your very core with its examination of what it is to be human; 127 hours just strings you along until it is time to be rewarded with a euphoric finale.
Surely silence – epic, enormous, oppressive silence - should be at the centre of his torment but the poor man never gets a moment's peace. A.R. Rahman contributes some fantastically inappropriate music and if it isn’t one of his, there is always some other throbbing beat on the soundtrack. With his baseball cap and headphones on Franco looks like he’s at the world’s least successful Flash Mob. The notices were put up on Facebook but no one else showed.
Directed by Danny Boyle.
Starring James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Clemence Posey, Kate Burton, Treat Williams. 94 mins
Everybody likes a challenge: pushing the barriers, exploring your limits, pulling a fridge of cold beers the length of the Great Wall of China etc, anything that gets you a book deal or a spot on the after dinner speaking circuit.
The recent trend for filmmakers is either making films for as little money as possible or making them in the smallest, most confined area imaginable with the minimum of cast i.e. Buried (man in a box) and Frozen (three people in chairlift.) Danny Boyle’s follow up to Slumdog Millionaire is from this how-can-they-possibly- make-a-film-of-that genre. It’s the true story of a man stuck in a remote crevasse when a giant boulder falls and traps his arm.
One weekend Aron Ralston (Franco) takes his dinky little bike and goes riding and jumping and leaping around the Blue John Canyon in Utah. After the thumping, energetic opening 15 minutes, that establish the situation and Aron’s character with expert economy, he slips and finds himself in an absurd and deadly predicament.
The film has a tension deficit. We already know he survives, how long he will be stuck there for and thanks to all the pre-publicity most everybody knows that it required a Gruesome Act to get free. Once he’s stuck it’s a matter of how to fill the remaining 80 odd minutes/ 127 hours. How will Boyle convey the loneliness, terror, despair and physical torment?
Well, mostly he doesn’t. Even though its star is now trapped and unable to move, the movie is still leaping around all over the place, firing dream scenes, split screens, flashbacks and hallucinations at the audience. If Scorsese was a verb I’d say Boyle scorseses the hell out of it, it’s a visual tour de force.
Which is great but if you are going to look into the darkness, you have to be prepared to hold its stare. This film flinches immediately; its sticks on it headphones and heads back to the warmth of some comforting certainties: love, relationships, companionship and family.
Touching The Void, a similar tale of improbable survival against the odds, strikes at your very core with its examination of what it is to be human; 127 hours just strings you along until it is time to be rewarded with a euphoric finale.
Surely silence – epic, enormous, oppressive silence - should be at the centre of his torment but the poor man never gets a moment's peace. A.R. Rahman contributes some fantastically inappropriate music and if it isn’t one of his, there is always some other throbbing beat on the soundtrack. With his baseball cap and headphones on Franco looks like he’s at the world’s least successful Flash Mob. The notices were put up on Facebook but no one else showed.
