127 Hours,” which opens today, might have been difficult to watch – it is the true story of an Englewood, Colorado mountain climber, Aron Ralston, whose arm was trapped beneath a boulder in a Utah canyon for six days.
Instead, Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s film resembles a kinetic Hype Williams music video, with its dynamic mash-up of split screens, triptychs and zooming, wildly inventive camera work, all set to a Red-Bullish, high-energy score by A.R. Rahman.
James Franco, who portrays Ralston with athleticism and humor, calls the film “Beckett on speed” for its amped existentialism.
Franco’s detailed work is absorbing, as he battles dehydration, weather and physical and mental deterioration with increasingly desperate survival measures. His use of a handheld camcorder - ostensibly to leave a final journal message for his family - provides ongoing “dialogue” which allows the audience access to his thoughts.
Boyle, whose “Slumdog Millionaire” won eight Academy Awards in 2009, including Best Picture and Best Director, co-scripted “127 Hours” with Simon Beaufoy, who won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for “Slumdog.” The screenplay is based on Ralston’s account, “Between a Rock and Hard Place,” so we know he survived; the mystery is how – was he rescued? Able to move the boulder? Did he gnaw his arm off?
Through flashbacks, memories, fantasies, dreams and ultimately, hallucinations, we travel out of the crevice and into Ralston’s mind and relationships. We spoke to Boyle recently about his techniques.
Is it true that some people have fainted at screenings of “127 Hours”?
There have been few people, yes; it’s not a hype thing, and they’re OK. But I think the vast majority of the audience appreciates the experience of going on such an intense journey. It’s wonderful to actually feel something in the cinema these days.
The energy and constantly shifting perspective of this film reminded me of music videos. Are you influenced by video techniques?
I’m a huge music fan, which is so important in all my films and I’m very proud to belong to that tradition although I haven’t worked in that actual medium. I do believe very much, though, in that kind of visual stimulus.
Talk about the choices you made in terms of your style, using split screen, triptychs, unusual camera angles. How did your ideas originate?
The triptychs idea was a way to introduce people at the beginning of the film, which looks like a credit sequence. It was trying to capture the exhilaration of his life at that time at age 27, with pretty much everything going for him. But then we bring the triptychs back later so they feel like they’re moving backwards in the film in a more serious way. They represent the repetitiveness in his day and the hallucinations he is going through as his mind deteriorates. We bring them back at the very end to reintroduce the people — they’re actually the completion of the emotional journey he’s been on.
(source:blogs.wsj.com)
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