I went to a free advance screening of 127 Hours this past week and it was followed by a Q&A session with its director Danny Boyle, who is probably most well-known as the Academy Award-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire. The whole experience was amazing.
The movie tells the true story of Aron Ralston, who made news in 2003 when he got trapped while hiking in Utah and ultimately had to cut off his own hand in order to free himself. He was trapped for 127 hours, so over 5 days. I realize that's nothing compared to the Chilean miners' 69 days but it's an equally fascinating story.
Because Aron was trapped all alone in such a remote area, the filmmaker decided to film it as it happened and not intersperse it with any sort of outside story. So, basically after about 15-20 minutes, the movie depicts Aron's entrapment and that's all. It's pretty intense and James Franco is so fantastic in it. The movie and James' performance has really stuck with me ever since I saw it. I'd be shocked if he's not nominated for an Oscar.
The Q&A with the author was pretty cool but unfortunately they took questions from the audience and most people had really stupid questions. It would have been nice if they had done some pre-screening. "Why did you decide to use humor when Aron was trapped?" (Gee, I don't know, to break up the seriousness!!) "It seems like you spend a lot of time picking out music in your movies. Do you?" (Yes, don't all filmmakers?) I watched the Q&A session videos for a similar screening in Boston and Boyle said a lot of the same things, so if you're interested, I'd watch...
If not, I'd definitely recommend the movie!
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