Monday 31 January 2011

127 Hrs...Survival at its best

I was contemplating the coming weekend on Friday. Since Federer was not in finals of AO, I had nothing to look forward to.Frankly last week was kinda sad. I was feeling dejected for quite some time. After watching Dhobi Ghat, I kept having these long conversations with myself about where my life is heading. What I am doing? basically kinda self analysis and as usual nothing much came out of it other than depression. My problem is I believe almost everything I tell myself. I am deviating from the topic so back to the blog. When you don't have a plan you go and watch a movie.That's the mantra. So we decided to go to O2 to watch 127 hours.

The cineworld near my home is not showing this movie.Their Loss. Actually we wanted to see Tangled, Black swan too but the timings were not matching. So 127 it was. Lots of my friends had praised this movie and of course James Franco is an eye candy..OK I will rave more about him later.

A quick snapshot of the movie..Its a true story about Mountain climber Aron Ralstone who was trapped under a boulder in Blue John Canyon in Utah desert for 5 days in April 2003. The movie is based on his autobiography 'Between a Rock and a hard place'. The movie is directed by 'Slumdog' famed Danny Boyle and it has original score by none other than A.R. Rehman. James Franco (Harry Osborn in Spider-man series) plays Aron Ralstone. The movie has 5 nominations to this year's Oscars including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Original Score.

Now a confession, before this movie I was not aware of the book or who Aron Ralstone is.In a way it was good as I didn't have any set expectations from the movie or the story. So When Aron sets out to his usual mountain climbing weekend getaway i was glued. Now he has not told anyone where he is going. The movie starts actually when Aron goes on his bike zigzagging on the spectacular red dirt roads. Suddenly he takes a really bad fall, get hurts but immediately gets his camera and clicks a snap smiling. This gives us the first glimpse in Aron mind, his happy go lucky and kinda casual attitude towards adventures, risks and life overall. Now he is on his way to his destination when disaster strucks. He falls down the canyon taking with him a loose Boulder and bam his right hand is stuck between the canyon wall and the boulder which refuses to budge

The movie is all about those 5 days where Aron deals with the pain, the fast  depleting water supply and food. He reminisces about his past, his relationships.He constantly keeps talking to his digicam and putting messages to his parents, sister, his work friend Brian. How he waits for the 15 min in morning sunshine. How he tries to chip away the bolder with his Chinese knife (with a flashlight which according to him is S**T and he advises us not to buy any made in China product no matter how cheap it is). The best part in movie comes when Aron does a self hosted Radio show, which is nothing but a self flagellation scene in which he realises one good lesson learnt as you cannot do everything alone.

The Magic of Boyle, Rehman and Franco sucks you in. You laugh with Aron, you pity him, you get angry with him for his selfishness and stupidities.You Will on him to stay sane, not to give up. Finally when Aron gets free (Ii wont divulge the details) you feel relieved and happy. Even if he gets free, you are still worrying for him till finally after 8 hours of leaving the boulder, he finally get rescued.

James Franco is outstanding as a swaggering, cocky and intelligent Aron Ralstone. After spider-man this movie shows him in totally different light and he grabs the opportunity with both hands.His wit, his cockiness, his full on life attitude, his sinking realisation of his predicament and finally his strength to do the inevitable just moves you. After he gets free and he sees water, he just tap his feet twice and laughs. You actually feel his profound relief for being Alive.Hats off to James.Hope he gets that coveted award ( BTW he Will be Co-Hosting the awards too with Anne Hathaway)

The movie's tag line is 'THERE IS NO FORCE ON EARTH MORE POWERFUL THAN THE WILL TO LIVE' actually makes sense when you live those 5 days with Aron. Survival at its best. So don't go anywhere without telling someone :)

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