OH DANNY BOYLE
*Steer clear if you don’t want to know what happens in 127 Hours. I mean, we all know but still, there’s detail in here.*
It was around 1996 when I went to the Playhouse cinema in Portrush to watch a new film called ‘Trainspotting.’ We smoked cigarettes in our seats. We leaned forward to understand the Edinburgh brogue. We leaned back to distance ourselves from the sight of a baby lying dead in a heroin den. The soundtrack was on loop for the rest of the year. Posters went up in university halls. For our generation and before you could shout in your best Scottish accent, “What are you talking about?” it was an instant classic.
More recently I watched Danny Boyle’s ‘127 Hours‘ and what can I say about his style of filmmaking? Have you ever had back-bruises after a pillow-fight? Watching his films reminds me of getting lamped with a pillow by my older cousin. I imagine Boyle necking a truck-load of Red Bull then flying onto the set (like Happy Gilmore running up to the tee) and shouting “ACTION!” Or when he writes his brief for the film soundtrack, it probably has phrases in it like “high-f’ing-octane” or “smack me in the face with big bloody beats.” Then there’s the editing and I’m wondering from where the next frame is going to fly by (like animated Powerpoint slides).
Boyle’s chooses to tell stories written by blokes about blokes (Trainspotting, The Beach, Slumdog, Millions, 127 Hours). He grabs hold of them and throws them up on the screen like an ‘action painter.’ Art critic, Harold Rosenberg wrote about action painting (think Julianne Moore’s painting style in ‘The Big Lebowski’), “The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value — political, aesthetic, moral.”
These values are often central to a feel-good story; ideals of achievement, beauty, redemption (The Blind Side, Dead Poets Society, Rain Man); yet when it comes to a film like 127 Hours or when I think back, Trainspotting, I am more convinced of Boyle’s storytelling as a rejection of these ideals. Instead he sticks his neck out for a simple value; it’s not all about you. So with this idea, his films will leave you on an ‘up’ but in a more realistic fashion.
In 127 Hours, a young guy who spends his time hanging out like a lone-wolf traversing through the desert, gets his arm trapped behind a rock and there is no way of getting free. The 127 Hours are obviously how long Aron Ralston is trapped for though only when you see him trapped, with hardly any water and in the cold shade, do you realise just how painfully long this is.
Regardless of it being a true story, Boyle still has choices Boyle to make and I like the way he goes about it. He doesn’t let this story come good because of the power of nature (Rolston dreams of an almighty flood wrenching him free) or redemption (Rolston videos messages of apology to his family for his selfishness) and you can forget achievement (Ralston’s brute strength and resourcefulness being what the typical man relies on, are not enough). Once all these options are exhausted and still Rolston can’t get free, he lets go. He surrenders to die.
This is a pretty cool moment and for me, it is tuned into the Christian understanding of what Jesus did for humanity (you’ll find a better articulation of this on an Alpha course). Rolston has a premonition. He sees himself with a boy who we guess is his son and suddenly, the fight is on. This isn’t about appreciating your loved ones. Rolston (brilliantly played by James Franco) wasn’t thinking about the people he was leaving behind when he fought back. The pivotal moment came when Rolston saw his son and a life utterly dependant on him. He moves from just appreciating his relationships to accepting the significance of the role he plays within them.
So he cuts his arm off and lives to see his son Leo born seven years later.
Rolston now speaks about how "he did not lose his hand, but gained his life back."
There we have it. A character transformed from “I am a rock. I am an island” to a person putting relationships at the heart of everything he values. It reminds me of Paul Auster’s ‘The Brooklyn Follies,’ or the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ In the latter, the only person who fails to see the difference George Bailey makes to the lives of others is George Bailey. He is the same person at the end of the film as he was throughout, what changes (after a good sharp-shock) is his realising he is connected to the people around him and it is this understanding that gives him a sense of purpose and puts a great big smile on his face.
I can’t always handle the high-f’ing-octane, thumping soundtrack, the jazzy editing or the blokey stories but I high-five Danny Boyle for his storytelling choices. He’s got guts where I have ‘feelings’ (he’s a guy, I’m a girl, go figure) and I’m pretty sure he’d cut his arm off if you told him your life depended on it.
