Filming kicks off any day now on Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” —the follow-up to his Oscar winning smash “Slumdog Millionaire” — and the new print issue of the ever-excellent Empire Magazine (it’s not online though) has a lengthy interview with the director, who reveals plenty of new details on the project. The project stars James Franco as Aron Ralston, a American mountain climber whose arm became trapped under a boulder while in Blue John Canyon in Utah. After being trapped there for six days, before cutting off his own arm with a penknife, rappelling down a 20 metre wall and hiking eight miles down the canyon, Ralston finally made his way to safety (a family he came across who gave him food and water).
It’s an extraordinary story, but one that presents any number of problems in terms of putting it on screen, as Boyle admits, laughing, “If you’re lucky enough to be in a position where you can do this, there should be a part of you that doesn’t know what you’re doing.” As a film mostly set in one location, with one man standing still, with no one to talk to, it’s not obviously the most dynamic cinematic experience. But Boyle has a plan in place.
“We’ve got this idea that because there are so few characters in it, we’ll use two cinematographers: Anthony Dod Mantle, who did “28 Days Later”, and Enrique Chediak, who did “28 Weeks Later.” One is from Northern Europe and the other is South American. They’ll bring different things to it. Like in a conventional film you’d have a comic character and a villain.” It’s a fascinating idea, and one we can’t wait to see realized.
And the question of dialogue? The film features Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara in its supporting cast, so it’s clear that at some point, other characters will appear (likely in the very beginning), but how will Boyle cope with his lone protagonist, short of giving him a volleyball to talk to? At one point he said he the first half of the film would have no dialogue (which some people took as an hour and half of no dialogue at all for some reason). But that seems to be slightly overstated. But what Boyle meant is dialogue literally, a back and forth. What seems very clear is that there will be monologue too.
“There is dialogue at the beginning, and at the end, obviously, but for most of the film he doesn’t have anyone to talk to,” Boyle said, but explained the first-person POV dialogue that will appear. “But what came to light is that he had a video camera with him, and he recorded six or seven messages, for those he thinks are going to grieve for him, basically saying goodbye. We’ve seen the messages, he doesn’t tend to show them… So if you like, that is the dialogue, with a future he thinks he is not going to have.”
Considering the fact that main character has to cut off his own arm, it’s apparently a pretty gruesome film in parts and the idea of the self-mutilation made Fox Searchlight fairly squeamish at first Boyle said. But there’s a lot less blood then you’d expect.
“Listen, it took him 44 minutes to cut his arm off. The blood loss would have been phenomenal… [however] that’s one of the weird things: he had deteriorated by then, the blood had thickened, the arm was effectively dead. This is one of the reasons he survived (because the blood had congealed, the arm had clotted and therefore the loss was minor).”
It’s a bold, challenging project and not something most directors would follow-up an Best Picture winner with (but a similar one-man show idea apparently worked at Sundance for “Buried”). In fact after his Oscar domination, Boyle had his pick of the litter when it came to projects. “Yeah, big stuff,” he says hinting at all the offers he was given, but gentlemanly enough not to name any of them.
Empire has much more from Boyle, so as ever, pick up the latest issue for more. The project’s already one of our most anticipated of the year, and between the director’s smart approach to the subject matter, and what we imagine is a sure-fire Oscar lock for the overdue Franco (how did Josh Brolin get a nod for “Milk” above Franco’s performance in that film?), we’re only going to get more excited as the release gets closer.