127 Hours

Directed by Slumdog Millionaire’s Danny Boyle, 127 Hours is a movie full of gut wrenching, awe inspiring true story made flesh. 127 hours is how long it took the real Aron Ralston to save his own life. By cutting off his arm.

James Franco, whom I fell in love with after seeing him in Freaks and Geeks, played the main character Aron. All I can say is I can’t believe he didn’t get Oscar for the absolutely raw performance that hooked you in and wouldn’t let you go for the entire length of the movie. No, not even if you’d have to go pee.

A daredevil. That’s how I’d describe Aron after the movie introduced him, a man that even after falling from a bike at break-neck speed just brushes himself off, picks himself up and laughs it off. Humor and flirting with two lost fellow adventurers is all the more effective as an ominous prelude to the fascinatingly horrendous core of the story.

The moment Aron starts descending, you just feel something’s about go terribly wrong. A giant rock comes loose and tumbles after Aron and as he impacts with the bottom of the narrow chasm, the rock wedges in between the walls, crushing his arm between rock and a hard place.

An insane coincidence is what someone might call it. Aron Ralston considers this to be fate. He says every decision he has made, every breath he has taken, has led him here. Ever since he was born, that rock has been waiting for him to get there.

And this is where the fight for survival begins.

Aron is literally stuck, trapped in a deep, narrow crack in a vast, impenetrable mass of rock with no one around for miles. Nobody knows he’s there and he has limited amount of water and food.

I don’t recall anything making me as grateful I have a bottle of water at hand as this movie has. Sure, everyone knows what it feels like to be thirsty. Imagine running for miles and all you can think of when you close your eyes is the wet, splashing sound of water being poured into a tall glass, little drops of condensation forming on the smooth surface.

Now imagine it magnified by thousand with nothing around to quench the thirst.

It’s very much focused on close-ups, an effective way to pull you in and see every little shadow of emotion pass Aron’s face. Anger, desperation, sadness, insanity, elation, you name it, James Franco nails it with brilliant ease.

As hours trickle by, and any attempt to get loose from the rock’s hold collapses, Aron starts to realize he’s not going to survive this. He records his thoughts on a camera until it too, shuts down. Specters from his past and hallucinations start to eclipse reality more and more often as Aron nears the end of the rope.

That’s when a vision of his unborn son gives him strength to do the unimaginable.

All he has is a knife dulled by chipping away at the rock. And it’s all he can use to free himself. This part isn’t something anyone can handle without getting sick. You’ll cringe and you’ll want to look away as he breaks the bones in his arms and starts to cut through the layer of skin and muscles underneath. At the same time, you can’t.

Just as you won’t be able to stop thinking this has actually happened and Aron Rolston used a two inch knife and pliers to sever his nerves, arteries and tendons. It took him one hour. This man has pushed through the excruciating pain that would render a regular person unconscious because he had something to live for.

And then, just like that, he is free.

He stumbles back as though he can’t believe it’s happened, that he has made it. At that point I don’t think it matters that he has lost his arm. Even with a long way ahead of him to make it to the surface and get help, he didn’t give up. Instead, he did something so unconceivable and incredible I can’t help but admire his will to live.

P.S.: The clips Aron Rolston recorded while he was stuck are online on YouTube. They’re truly amazing to see after watching the movie.