"127 Hours"

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[00:01:37] You are listening to the Next Best Picture podcast, and this is our review of 127 Hours.

[00:01:41] Good morning, everyone.

[00:01:42] It is 7 o'clock here in Canyonland, USA.

[00:01:43] Hey, Aaron.

[00:01:44] Mom still has not heard from you.

[00:01:45] Will you just call her, please?

[00:01:46] I'll talk to you soon.

[00:01:47] And this morning, on the boulder, we have a very special guest, Aaron Ralston.

[00:02:01] Oh, gosh.

[00:02:03] It's a real pleasure to be here.

[00:02:04] Thank you.

[00:02:05] Thank you.

[00:02:06] Hey.

[00:02:07] You lost?

[00:02:08] I'm a guide.

[00:02:09] What do you say?

[00:02:10] See, I'm something of a big heart.

[00:02:11] I'm a big heart.

[00:02:12] I'm a big heart.

[00:02:13] I'm a big heart.

[00:02:14] I'm a big heart.

[00:02:15] I'm a big heart.

[00:02:16] I'm a big heart.

[00:02:17] I'm a big heart hero.

[00:02:18] All you have to remember is that everything will be okay.

[00:02:19] Oh, my God.

[00:02:20] Aaron.

[00:02:21] Come on.

[00:02:24] We got to get out of here.

[00:02:25] It's been nice knowing you, man.

[00:02:26] Everything on my own.

[00:02:27] See ya.

[00:02:28] Bye.

[00:02:29] I don't think we figured in his day at all.

[00:02:35] Hey there, Aaron.

[00:02:36] Is it true?

[00:02:37] You didn't tell anyone

[00:03:25] all

[00:05:40] soon.

[00:06:04] And what also drew me in was Franco's performance, which is so energetic.

[00:06:08] in the beginning, he brings like a recklessness to the character, which is fun to watch.

[00:06:13] And I've never really thought about him much as an actor, but he really impressed me here,

[00:06:17] especially when he goes from that and to see how the energy just like completely evaporates

[00:06:23] in the moment where, you know, he realizes the severity of the situation. It just turns to like

[00:06:29] frustration and anguish. And he really impressed me and continued to throughout the film.

[00:06:36] And I also loved how, you know, in that moment, the music stops and his headphones are just

[00:06:41] dangling in the air and it sets the tone for what honestly is a pretty, I wouldn't say it's

[00:06:47] a terrible, it's a terrible watch in the sense that it's hard to watch him go through this,

[00:06:53] but it's so engrossing as the audience. And my stomach was in a knot the whole time,

[00:06:57] despite like me knowing what was going to happen in the end, like the whole arm thing I already

[00:07:02] knew about. But yeah, and I thought it was really well shot in that very tiny single location.

[00:07:09] There were some things I didn't really enjoy, like I found the abundance of like hallucination scenes

[00:07:15] kind of took me out of it a bit. But overall, yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed this.

[00:07:19] Wow. Okay. I was not expecting that to start off here. Okay, that's great, though. That's why I

[00:07:25] love these retrospectives. Sometimes we get first time watches from people here on the podcast.

[00:07:29] That's awesome. Dan, what about you? I sometimes think that Danny Boyle is at his best when he's

[00:07:40] working under a lot of constraints. I feel like that's when he really gets into his creativity

[00:07:49] and starts thinking about things in a way that only he does. And that's one of the reasons why

[00:08:00] I like this movie so much. I mean, if you've been alive on planet Earth since the year 2000,

[00:08:07] you probably heard this story. And you know the story of Aaron Ralston, who was trapped by a

[00:08:14] boulder in a canyon for almost a week and had to cut off his own arm in order to survive.

[00:08:22] You could not escape this story. And here Danny Boyle is making a film out of it that is

[00:08:31] wholly surprising in every possible way, from how they chose to tell the story, which is pretty much

[00:08:40] maybe the only way to tell the story cinematically and have it really work.

[00:08:46] But they still manage to do it, staying with pretty much one actor and pretty much one location.

[00:08:57] But finding all these ways to make it incredibly entertaining to watch, even though it's both

[00:09:05] incredibly depressing and also a story that we kind of know where it goes. So it's really easy

[00:09:12] for something like this to fall into the trap of just being a death march to the inevitable point

[00:09:19] where he cuts his arm off. But it doesn't feel like that at all. I think Sarah's right, a lot

[00:09:25] of that is due to James Franco's incredible performance. I mean, say what you want about him,

[00:09:31] but you cannot take this performance away from him. And it is pretty much the

[00:09:37] ne plus ultra of who James Franco is and has always been as an actor. But tapping into this vein of...

[00:09:48] No pun intended.

[00:09:50] Yeah, no pun intended. Tapping into this vein of not exactly patheticness,

[00:09:58] but of real vulnerability, I guess, that I don't think we have seen from him so often since.

[00:10:06] It's the standout performance of his career to me, and his Oscar nomination was so well-deserved.

[00:10:13] As was, frankly, all of this movie's Oscar nominations. And

[00:10:17] it probably deserved at least one or two more, if you ask me.

[00:10:21] Okay. All right.

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[00:10:55] I'll start off by saying this. I remember seeing this in theaters in 2010, and I remember

[00:11:01] knowing the ending, but I felt like we were also going through this interesting time period,

[00:11:08] or at least I was, where I was watching movies where the ending was known, but you didn't care

[00:11:16] because you were just so engrossed by the filmmaking. I'm thinking of this. I'm thinking of

[00:11:22] something like Zero Dark Thirty or Lincoln, Argo. There was this run of movies I remember in the

[00:11:31] 2010s where it was like, oh my gosh, I know how this ends, but these movies are still so

[00:11:38] captivating on so many levels. And 127 Hours was one where I was like, well, they're not going to

[00:11:45] tell a story about a guy who gets trapped and just dies. I'm like, so. And then sure enough,

[00:11:51] I remember overhearing no, no, no, he does eventually get out. And then I was spoiled.

[00:11:56] Somebody did say that he cut off his arm. And I remember the way I got spoiled was actually from

[00:12:02] the reactions from Telluride. Wait, Matt, did you had you not heard this story before seeing

[00:12:10] the movie? No, no, I had not. No, no, no. Yeah, no. Well, I wasn't. Well, I wasn't really plugged

[00:12:18] into the news back then in my life, to be honest with you. Oh, my. Like, I'm much more plugged into

[00:12:23] the news nowadays. This was on more than just news. I hear you. I hear you. But believe me,

[00:12:30] I had no idea. Wow. So yeah, when I heard the reactions out of Telluride and people describing,

[00:12:35] like, oh, my God, the final scene had people fainting in their seats and

[00:12:39] squealing and, you know, throwing up and things like that. I was like, oh, God. Okay. Yeah. Like,

[00:12:45] let's see this. Let's see what everyone's getting so crazy about. So I went into this and I remember

[00:12:51] I had two reactions. One was, wow, they actually made a single location movie this dynamic and

[00:13:01] exciting and thrilling. And two, I remember thinking James Franco's performance was so good

[00:13:11] that it actually had me doubting the ending, like the outcome of the movie. I had forgotten.

[00:13:18] And that's how, like, engrossed I was in what this guy was going to going through. But that's

[00:13:22] also because Boyle does such a good job of immersing us within the headspace of the character.

[00:13:28] I mean, Sarah, you mentioned before about like the hallucinations and things like that.

[00:13:33] I do understand that criticism. I think it does go to that point, maybe one step too far. But there

[00:13:38] is such a use of imagery here to help convey exactly what is on this guy's mind to the point

[00:13:46] that you really do feel like you are stuck under that boulder alongside Aaron as this movie is

[00:13:54] going on. And I found it to just be such a totally immersive experience overall.

[00:14:02] I think the cinematography, the editing, the score, like everything in this movie is just

[00:14:06] aces throughout. And still to this day, I am very moved by it by the time we get to the end of the

[00:14:12] film for a multitude of different reasons. It's not necessarily a big issue movie. It's not about

[00:14:20] something that is wholly unique. It's a very intimate and personal film. But it's something

[00:14:27] that I think that all of us can relate to on some level or another. And that is the need to survive

[00:14:36] when, you know, no pun intended, but like, it's true, like when you're stuck between a rock and

[00:14:41] a hard place, what do you what are you going to do in this situation? And I found that whole

[00:14:47] fight or flight sort of identity that the film like took on in showing moment by moment,

[00:14:57] how this man's mind worked to tackle this problem and go through like these stages of emotion

[00:15:04] throughout. It felt like it was also something that was very relatable, even though I'm going

[00:15:12] to start off with like an early question here that we got from Ryan McDermott.

[00:15:18] Ryan McDermott sent in a question saying, I have to ask you all, do you think it would

[00:15:24] have taken you more or less time to escape the same situation? And that's the thing that I come

[00:15:32] away with when I watch it 127 hours now is that I always find myself saying, you know, eventually,

[00:15:39] I think I would resort to cutting off the arm to survive. I think we all probably would get to

[00:15:44] that point one way or another, I imagine. But I don't know if I would have been as smart about it.

[00:15:51] And I don't know if I would have taken as many steps as Aaron did beforehand, because his brain

[00:15:58] just obviously works, I think a little bit differently than ours does when it comes to

[00:16:02] survival and utilizing one's resources and know, like knowing his like toolkit of like items that

[00:16:09] he has with him. As, as well as he does, like there's a lot of ingenuity at play here watching

[00:16:16] him trying to figure out, okay, how do I get myself out of this situation? And I found that

[00:16:22] part of it to be really fascinating. Look, I love any movie where a character is put in a situation

[00:16:31] that seems inescapable, and they have to like, empty their backpack or their purse or their

[00:16:37] pockets or whatever and lay out everything they have and try to solve a problem with just the

[00:16:42] things that they have on them. Favorite type of movie, okay? One of my favorites anyway. So

[00:16:49] absolutely love that part of this movie as well. But for me personally, I either would have cut that

[00:16:57] arm off within like the first 36 hours or I would have died there. What about you, Sarah?

[00:17:04] Yeah, my first thought would have been well, my arm stuck. I guess I gotta cut it off now.

[00:17:14] It's the first hour I'm like, I've seen this film before.

[00:17:19] Sarah's movie is called One Hour.

[00:17:22] Yeah, One Hour. I'm done.

[00:17:25] I think mine would have been called Nine Hours. I don't know. Like, there's a part of me that

[00:17:33] thinks I would have tried to hold out at least until the water ran out to see if somebody might

[00:17:37] have come by looking for me or just by chance somebody was walking by and I could have got

[00:17:44] their attention. But yeah, push comes to shove at a certain point. That arm is coming off.

[00:17:51] I also think we would have told people where we were going, which would probably help.

[00:17:55] Yes. Yes.

[00:17:56] Hey everyone, sorry to interrupt but this is a preview of our review for 127 hours here on the

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[00:19:31] Transcribed by https://otter.ai