127 Hours-Film Review

So two years after the release of the legendary Slumdog Millionaire Boyle is back, this time with a tale of a different type; a gritty true survival story.
A far cry from the love story he portrayed in Slumdog, or is it? Common themes within Danny Boyle's work is the human aspect of them and survival. He expertly and delicately depicts people where all of the narrative revolves around them and their circumstances which leads to their actions whilst simultaneously portraying their survival,with the survival of three orphans from the slums, the survival of love through everything and survival through drug addiction. Surely then it's not too big a leap to make a film about one man surviving a horrific ordeal. However saying that, this film is simply the tale of one man trapped in one crevice for over five days, doesn't really lend itself to the big screen does it? We all know Danny Boyle is a film genius but could even he pull of the seemingly impossible feat of capturing and holding a cinema full of people's attention with a 94 minute film of a man in a crevice?
To put it as plainly as possible, yes. Opening with the thrumming beats chosen by A. R. Rahman, who also worked with Boyle on Slumdog, this film starts with the vitality and freedom of life before running head first into the deepest, darkest fears that we as a species collectively share. Fear of isolation, fear of dying alone, fear of your own mortality, fear of never seeing your loved ones again and the uncaring truth of our capabilities. Boyle knows that the shocking aspects of this story is the incentive to go and see it and plays with this dramatic irony as we all know what's about to unfold and the gruesome climatic end to his experience so instead of simply showing us it he experiments with his usual stunning cinematography and explores what it is that really drives us to keep living. Yes, most of the film is shot in the one crevice with the odd hallucination or flashback but it's so beautifully shot and breathtakingly performed that it doesn't feel like that. You are engrossed in the story and care so much about the fallen climber that it doesn't matter and it's that which makes this film so great.

As I've said this film is breathtakingly performed by the talented James Franco but I have to reiterate that; he literally carries the whole film. There has been much buzz about his performance with many people saying that he deserves an Oscar for it and I completely agree, he portrays every aspect of his character completely, showing realistically what it was that drove Aron Ralston to amputate his own arm. However that's not really what this film is about; it's about what we really live for. According to the film we live for our loved ones and for our children, or rather the chance to have them as he didn't back then, but it was a so called 'premonition' of the child he would have that proved to be the final factor that gave him the strength to hack his arm off with a blunt knife with obvious links to Darwinism and the need to procreate and pass on our genes. During that uncomfortable and in parts unwatchable scene and in many others as well you really feel the depth of his desperation to not die there.
It's an ultimately feel good beautifully made film that makes you evaluate what and who you personally live for. I recommend any one to watch this. It's incredible.