Danny Boyle metformin 500 mg dosage is a freaking filmmaking chameleon. The guy actively seeks out things that aren’t even remotely related in genre or subject matter every time he lines up his next project. Excluding A Life Less Ordinary, because I haven’t seen it, here’s Boyle’s resume chronologically: Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later, Millions, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire. That’s drugs, a beach, zombies, little kids finding stolen money, sci-fi and rags to riches. And then he follows that up with a true story about real life hiker Aron Ralston, who was hiking through a remote Utah canyon when a rock fell and pinned his arm against a wall.
127 Hours is the metformin hydrochloride 1000 mg roughly five days Ralston spent stuck in the middle of a canyon with no food, a scarce amount of water, no phone, no one knowing where he was and not even sunlight but for a 15 minute window every morning. For almost the entirety of it’s 94 minute run time, we’re between two narrow, looming canyon walls with Ralston (James Franco) and no where to go.
We experience many things with Ralston and go through the stages of how he deals with his situation and attempts to troubleshoot his way out as any skilled and resourceful hiker would. It’s always a challenge for a filmmaker to deal with the idea of isolation and being visually creative when you have a situation like Ralston’s where it’s just the actor, the camera, and the audience. It comes with an extremely high difficulty of execution similar to the 2010 Sundance hit Buried, which I reviewed back in September.
Boyle puts us in this uncomfortable place alone with Ralston and finds imaginative, organic ways to not only keep us entertained inside the canyon, but also to take us out of it without feeling like a cheap storytelling device. We travel through the mind of Ralston and the people he’s left behind while he nears death with every passing hour. Sometimes it’s the small things, like forgetting some material object he might have left behind that would be of great help(I won’t say what, because the payoff is great), and other times it’s the memory of the one that got away, or the last time he spoke to his parents, or rather when he didn’t pick up the phone and instead let it go to the answering machine.
Though the question that constantly lingers focuses on the human spirit. It begs you to consider, what would you do if you were in Ralston’s place? What would you be capable of? What is your will to survive? If you don’t live under a rock (ha-…oh, not…bad form), you know what Ralston would do, and what he did do. Which also raises another question, and another challenge, for co-writer/director Boyle. How do you make a film exciting when presumably your entire audience already knows how the story ends? I’ll dance around that ending just in case you somehow aren’t aware, but it’s a combination of things.
First, you have to have scenes that are interesting to continually captivate the viewer. I haven’t read Ralston’s book about the experience, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Second, to me, is the buildup. We all know what’s coming, but Boyle & Beaufoy don’t just cut to the chase and have him do what we all know he’s going to do eventually. They make it seem natural, like this conclusion he comes to is completely organic to the events of the film. It’s teased at an earlier point, and then not revisited until later on. With that, and everything else, you’re constantly in a state of anxiety waiting for “it” to happen. And when it does happen, it’s everything that can possibly define Boyle as a filmmaker of any one type. One word to me that could describe this film, or Boyle in general, is visceral. Boyle hits every level of experience you can have in a movie theatre because he knows exactly what it takes to get there with a viewer.
One level, specifically, and the most painful moment in the movie for me, was created entirely by a non-diagetic sound that pierces through your ears and into your soul. The sound becomes so visceral itself that I felt like I was inside that canyon stuck under a rock. It made me cringe, more than the accompanying visual itself. 127 Hours is not for the faint of heart. (And Doug, if you’re reading this, you will pass out. Guaranteed.)
Whatever your tolerance–or lackthereof–for viewing pain is, I think this journey is worth that pain. So what you would do in this particular situation? I know I sat there watching Ralson and thinking to myself, “There’s no way in hell I could ever do that.” And I think most would probably agree. But under duress as Ralston was? I think we’d be surprised by the things we’re capable of.
And to that extent, you may even be surprised by the things James Franco is capable of. While a film of isolation would be challenging for any director, it’s even more challenging for the actor present in every frame of the film. Franco has done some very good work in the past with Gus Van Sant’s Milk, but he’s largely known for less serious matter like Spider-Man and comedies such as The Pineapple Express, not quite the powerhouse Oscar vehicles, along with an inexplicable recurring role on the soap opera General Hospital.
Franco’s got quite a strange resume, so it’s great to see him featured in such a big way to see what he’s capable of, and he doesn’t disappoint for a single moment of his time spent in front of the camera. Franco is as strong a candidate as we’ve seen so far this year (or that I can think of at the moment) for Best Actor at the Oscars, and expect him to be there with some other big names when the nominations are announced. This is unquestionably the finest performance of Franco’s young career.
127 Hours is only playing in NY & LA right now, but will have a rolling expansion as it builds word of mouth and box office revenue. This is a film you should go out of your way to see. It’s one that highlights the uniquely gifted talents of one of our finest (and largely under-appreciated until 2008’s Slumdog Oscar domination) directors today, as well as the talents of an actor many might have otherwise not thought of as much more than Peter Parker’s best friend. Hopefully the film has as much of a will to survive as it’s subject did and fights its way to find a larger audience. If it doesn’t do so before the Oscars, it’s acclaim and awards attention will likely demand that audience afterwards. Make no mistake, this is as incredible a film as it is a journey and exploration of the will to survive.
Overall 9/10
Directed by Danny Boyle. Adapted for the Screen by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy. Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle & Enrique Chediak. Edited by Jon Harris. Original Music by A.R. Rahman.
Starring: James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Treat Williams, Kate Burton and Clémence Poésy.
