Danny Boyle has turned the dramatic story of Aron Ralston into a monument to human reliability and advocacy: 127 hours is a strong documentary against self-sufficiency. The story, the chain of events, is on a second plane, despite the cold in the dark night, the insects, the thirst, the blood and the urine, or the unbearable minutes -for the spectator- showing James Franco self-amputating his arm.
I feel that somehow a deeper description of a human being brought to such an extreme ordeal is possible, a place where everyone is a total stranger for himself. How would you feel if you can sniff the stench of your hand decomposing or can hear the hiss sound of air leaving your putrefied thumb when pinched with a cheap multi-tool set? There is something that I missed, as well; something that must have been petrifying for Ralston: the sound of silence in the desert night. The pre-tragedy character is a person full of noise. His headphones and the loud music, the screaming, the splattering of water, the wild laughing, all play a huge role in the first 20 minutes. After the accident, what else is to be heard but the rubbing of the blunt knife against the boulder? What else but the temporary moans or self-pity confessions to the camera? What else but the burning silence?
The accident actually kills one individual and brings a new one into live. The first is a lone rider; the second, a family man, conscious and humanitarian. The first is capable of doing all 55 fourteeners in Colorado, alone, in winter time -a pioneer-; the second breaks through the wild call of suicide thanks to his wife Jessica and states that if he was able to survive the accident was because their common and fundamental desire "for freedom, for love and for connection".
The most interesting thing is that both men are exclusive. One cannot be with another. The second came after the first died; the first was completely disrespectful of the second. This is how Aron Ralston expresses the idea himself in his book:
"It is 11.32am, Thursday, May 1 2003. For the second time in my life, I am being born. This time I am being delivered from the canyon’s pink womb, where I have been incubating. This time I am a grown adult and I understand the significance and power of this birth as none of us can when it happens the first time. The value of my family, my friends and my passions well up a heaving rush of energy that is like the burst I get approaching a hard-earned summit, multiplied by ten thousand. Pulling tight the remaining connective tissues of my arm, I rock the knife against the wall, and the final thin strand of flesh tears loose; tensile force rips the skin apart more than the blade cuts it.
A crystalline moment shatters, and the world is a different place".
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