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The ‘Wonderful Life’ of ‘127 Hours’

In theaters Friday: Madea’s Big Happy Family, Water for Elephants

New on DVD/Blu-ray: The King’s Speech, Rabbit Hole, Somewhere

Last week, Best Picture Oscar-nominee and one of the most unique films of 2010 127 Hours arrived on DVD. The name of the film’s flawed protagonist, hiker and adventurer Aron Ralston, became nearly ubiquitous in 2003 when a boulder in Blue John Canyon, Utah became dislodged and trapped the then 27-year-old’s right arm to the canyon wall. For five days, Ralston tried every way possible to free himself from the boulder, suffered cold desert temperatures at night, rationed what little water he had and recorded alternately delirious and heartbreakingly honest videos to the family he had too often neglected.

On the fifth day, out of water and hallucinating, Ralston broke his arm in two places and used a small pocketknife to sever it in two just below the elbow. Freed from the rock, Ralston still had to wrap his arm, scale a 65-foot sheer wall, and hike 8 miles before encountering a family that gave him fresh water and called 911 to his rescue.

The story is a remarkable tale of survival and will power, but some called it unfilmable. Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle accepted the challenge with Oscar-nominee James Franco embodying the firecracker Ralston. Franco plays Ralston fast and loose, but captures his cavalier attitude and free-spirited verve with loads of innate charm. His energetic Ralston would look out of place seated in a chair for an extended period, much less stranded in a hauntingly narrow canyon for days on end.

Boyle’s narrative is fast paced and his cinematography is bright, colorful and energetic. The sweeping aerials of the Utah desert glow with a burnt orange intensity. A pool of water hidden 30 feet below a cliff sparkles an inviting turquoise. Streams of light and rain creep through Ralston’s canyon creating an eerily beautiful tomb.

Shockingly and suddenly, his life of freedom becomes the ultimate trap, a life-and-death fight for what is important in his life. Stuck there, Between a Rock and a Hard Place as Ralston’s autobiography is titled, realizes that even in this isolated crisis, he can’t make it on his own. Though his lucid thoughts and daydreams he consults his parents and his sister, who give ballast to his will. An ex-girlfriend consoles him in a dark hour. Video clips of an adventure he had with two girls hiking gives him friendship. A warm vision of the son he wants to have some day gives him hope and drive.

127 Hours is almost an inverse of It’s a Wonderful Life, a film that showed awe-shucks Jimmy Stewart just how miserable life would be for those around him if he was not around to take part. Ralston’s realization is that he needs others a great deal more than he ever imagined. For a guy who valued himself completely as a “hard hero,” it is a tough lesson learned. But as John Dunne famously wrote, “No man is an island.”

I was moved by the film, but not completely wowed by it. I think that’s because 127 Hours does not take audiences on a journey as much as it takes them to a point. A point of crisis, sure, but a point at which we all must daily ask ourselves not, “Would you cut your arm off?” but instead, “What is most important to you in life, and what is that thing actually worth?”