Danny Boyle is a chameleon of a director. He’s never made a remotely similar film in terms of genre, and yet each one is undeniably his own. They can be brutal and visceral throughout and yet find a way to be inspirational and exciting in the end. “127 Hours” is one of Boyle’s greatest challenges and greatest achievements.
Boyle took the story of Aron Ralston, a reckless mountain climber who went deep into Utah and got himself trapped in a crevasse underneath a boulder for 127 hours, and made it an exciting, visually stimulating film. We know Ralston survived because his book “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” serves as the basis for this film. The way he escaped is almost just as much common knowledge, and the buildup to his eventual escape builds a wonderful tension throughout the film. Boyle feeds us small teases of Ralston weighing his options before making that decision, and in an amazingly nauseating climactic scene, he floors us.
Such is the power of the rest of “127 Hours,” which finds ways to be simultaneously adrenaline fueled and heart stopping, intense and desolate or revealing and claustrophobic. Enrique Chediak’s cinematography is the best of the year because he wonderfully blends the handheld queasy cam with the panoramic HD cam to create those dual emotions. Watch some of the early shots inside the cliff’s cracks looking up at Ralston, and notice how as buried as the camera remains, how much it still seems to capture. Continue reading “127 Hours”