Update.

To all those who bother reading my blogs, I thank you deeply. I have been meaning to review a few more things: I recently saw Black Swan, and got to see a restored version of the brilliant 1923 sci-fi masterpiece Metropolis, by Fritz Lang. I also have been meaning to review Come Around Sundown. As you can tell, I only review things that I adore, or find difficult or rewarding: I see no point in spilling bile over things that one doesn't appreciate. All I can say about the two films is that they're both wonderful, and Come Around Sundown is a brilliant album. I will review something soon, and try to make it a regular thing.

Thank you for reading,

Robert Head.

A review of 127 Hours.

James Franco in a tight spot....

Jesus! What is there to say about this film? Well, a lot - I'll start with that to break the creative dam. You'll know the fine print, of course: the film charts the story of Aron Ralston (played by James Franco (of Pineapple Express and Spider Man fame)), a twenty-seven-year old engineer who goes for a weekend rambling and rock climbing out in the wastes of Utah - a state whose climate is intolerable, and whose penal system is something else entirely.

I will not list endless details about the film's plot - unlike big Hollywood, it is sparse and realistic (but not as terse as the naked terrain of nude imagination and recollection).

The visuals in the film are awesome (in the true sense of the word). Shots are interrupted by 21st century zeitgeist-inspired cutoffs and screen splits in which we see the likes of crowded subway platforms and Aron driving through the scrub observing advertising signs and other symbols - the use of advertisements is brief but effective (we note the restless, unrestricted hunger for consumption of our time).

In one scene, Aron fantasises about a bottle of gatorade trapped inside his SUV, licking his lips with the desires he is entertaining. During this scene, which details his second day inside the canyon, we see snippets of old Coca-Cola archive - commercials of young people slurping the tasty brown liquid and generally enjoying their freedom (albeit an ideologically informed one).

As Aron tires on, trying desperately to loose the rock - even putting his engineering skills to work by building a pulley -, we see him break down: he thinks about love lost (thrown away might be more acurate), how he never bothered telling anyone he was going to wander off into the Utah wilderness; this rock, he says, has awaited him since his birth; every choice he's made has lead him to this canyon, this rock, this situation - this destiny.

But as he roams the collapsing wilderness of his thoughts and strokes that delerium, he imagines his family cosied up on and beside a couch at the canyon end watching him; then he sees a young boy. He sees himself with this boy, the boy walking on his feet. This image is enough to prick this sphere of fatigue, bile, and pain; Aron is spurned on. (At this moment, I could not help but stare around the theatre, thinking about how these viewers in arms felt - whether any of these men were taking renewed stock of their lives in this exercise of vicariousness.)

Everything, of course, leads to the bloody culmination. Aron makes a few botched attempts of severing his arm; he does it, though, and I will not tell you how: that can wait for your viewing of the film, dear reader.

By the end of the film, seeing the real-life Aron Ralston and his family, I was stifling tears - to the point where I had to leave the theatre first to compose myself. The film contains laughs, grit, composure, and will evoke plenty of tears - all in the hands of Danny Boyle's supreme direction, managing to breathe despite his magnificent oeuvre. Aron met and married a girl three years later and fathered a child in February 2010, and continues to climb. It seems the rock, that rock that trapped him for five days in a crack of desolation one month after the bombs fell on Baghdad, did not win - his destiny has stretched beyond the shape and weight of that anchor, that test, that brought out the colour of his soul.

Upon the film's completion, I felt I'd left a part of myself behind; the baggage I shed I could tangibly feel and yet it was as vapour. But I know now: it is simple - will I do right by the time I have? Will I face the crunch, the gulf, the void, myself? That heap quivers on the floor. The power of film is many.

When I left the theatre, the two lads sitting in front of me exclaimed they didn't 'get' the film: they would have used their mobile phones! I 'got' it, though - I was listening (and not just with my ears). Men will be men: c'est la vie pour homme.