127 Hours

So, yes, I finally sat down and watched this movie. When this movie originally came out, I thought 'eh, another inspirational survivor story; not for me'. Then this movie really just took off, with word of mouth, and then with the very nice nominations earned at Oscar time. And just now, I have finally watched it and am very thankful that I did so. The movie's racked in more than $50 million on a meager $18 million budget.

In case you haven't heard, this is the movie (very accurately) based on the real life canyoneer, Aron Ralston - played by James Franco, who got his arm stuck under a boulder deep inside a canyon crevice and eventually had to do the unthinkable to free himself.

I've wikipedia-ed this story and the plot seems to be very accurate to the true events. The plot was sequential and gave us a story instead of a reenactment. There was enough time in the plot devoted to getting to know Aron as a character instead of just the facts of his predicament. The greatness of this movie really came from the editing and the performances, but the script to enable these to work so well.

The editing in this movie was just fantastic. It was perfectly aligned with the tone of the movie. It kept the pace of the movie up, even though the majority was in a tiny set. I love it when editors take some 'risks' with the editing instead of just doing cut after cut from wide to mid to close ups. Split screens and montages aren't used nearly enough, in my opinion. In this movie the editing was in keeping with the movie and helped move it along, instead of being an unnecessary distraction as in some cases. It was just executed extremely well. The soundtrack of the movie also kept up the pace and tone.

Is there anything that James Franco can't do? I had the pleasure of viewing his short film, 'Saturday Night', at SXSW last year for which he completed for his work at NYU and was basically a documentary on the making of SNL - which has never been allowed before. It was a great experience. James Franco is probably one of the most well rounded actors out there I'd say. In any event, he really did this part justice. He seems to have captured the spirit of this man and did bring a lot of emotion to the screen. They've said that Aron allowed James Franco and the director to view the tapes of his video diary that he kept (which he now keeps locked in a vault) so they could get the movie accurate, which definitely seems to have worked.

I remember that I almost did the same thing with Into The Wild, in not wanting to initially see it when I judged it as an inspirational survival story. Both of these movies were so much more than a sappy inspirational story of the human nature; these were actual films; pieces of art. I'm very happy I finally broke down and took some time to watch this movie. It was great cinema and it's always a plus when it's based on true events. "Oops, oops"