Canyonlands: A review of 127 Hours

Spoiler Alert: The guy cuts his arm off and survives.

I was aware of that much when I first saw the trailer for 127 Hours. Aron Ralston is pretty much world famous for chopping his arm off after exhausting all his other options when he got trapped in a canyon.

What I missed in conversations about Ralston (I never read his book) was where his harrowing captivity took place. It's set in Canyonlands in Utah, a place where I spent a week last year with my brother and my good friend Charles Chung.

A sprawling, stunning array of rock formations, boulders, canyons, historical relics, and geological wonders, Canyonlands is about as remote as something that beautiful can be in the mainland USA.

It's a great place to go if you want to disappear. Which Aron Ralston did. Which is why he didn't tell anyone where he was going, which caused a lot of problems for him after his arm got pinned down by a boulder in an obscure crevasse.

The movie is cut together like a music video, pulling all sorts of cinematic stunts like split-screen montages, stock footage, dream sequences, massive aerial camera movements, and video-screen-within-the-film metanarrative.

I would think it would be enough to make me forget that the whole thing takes place in a canyon, under one rock. But it doesn't. All the gimmicks are used so well, and with such a sense of timing and story, that they enhance and heighten the Ralston's struggle to stay hopeful, funny, sane, and alive.

127 Hours is a racous, full-tilt film that uses every tool at its disposal. It has a lot to say, but never does so too obviously. And that leaves room for plenty of thinking about what we hope for, what we believe in, what it means to really live, and who we are.

Or maybe just who Aron Ralston is, depending on how much you identify with his character.

Having been around Canyonlands myself, and having felt that childish impulse to drop off the map for a while, and having wondered at certain times why I should keep going, I found the whole thing invigorating, fresh, and celebratory.

Even during the whole arm-removal scene, which was vivid and gruesome, it's like the film was telling me, Look here. See how bad it gets? See how much he suffered to keep going? Don't doubt for a second that it's worth it.