127 Hours

127 Hours is fantastic!

If you’d told me that you could make a movie about a guy who gets stuck in a crevice for five days anything other than a tedious, painful slog, you’d have lost me.  But 127 Hours starts with a bang and propels us through an ordeal of thirst and increasing desperation with, dare I say it, verve and aplomb.

Here’s the setup: James Franco plays a fun-loving guy whose idea of a good time is heading out to the desert and biking, running, and climbing on his own.  Clearly, this character hasn’t seen any Werner Herzog documentaries, or he’d know that nature is intrinsically out to get him and he should never venture out without a buddy, a plan, someone who knows where he’s going, some signal flares, and maybe a short-wave radio.  Nevertheless, Franco’s a likeable fellow who appears to mean well, so we forgive.  While running along, he misjudges the stability of a piece of sandstone and falls into a crevice.  The piece of sandstone falls on top of him, pinning his arm to the crevice wall.  He’s alone.  He’s stuck.  He’s screwed.

Here’s the slog part, right?  Not at all.  Director Danny Boyle uses music, creative and exciting camera work, and a smartly crafted screenplay to keep us absolutely riveted on this story.  Franco tries various schemes to free his arm.  He deals with limited mobility and a dwindling water supply.  He hallucinates, he panics, he gets himself back together.  Ultimately, he decides he must cut his arm off to get free, then realizes that he’s dulled his knife by chipping at rock.  Now what?

This is powerful, exciting stuff, held together by Boyle’s virtuoso directing and Franco’s extraordinary performance.  I didn’t think I could spend an hour and a half with a guy pinned by a rock, but 127 Hours not only makes it work, it makes it pop.  127 Hours is phenomenal.

Hereafter

Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter tells three tales separated by time, distance and class, ties them together at the end, and leaves us feeling like we never really got into any of them.

In Tale 1, a beautiful and rich Frenchwoman has a near death experience and embarks on a journey of discovery about what we think we know about the afterlife.  In Tale 2, a boy loses his twin brother in a tragic accident and deals with the disillusionment that comes from seeing a variety of frauds who claim to be able to help him get in touch with his beloved sibling.  In Tale 3, a legitimate psychic tries to run from his gift because it’s virtually impossible to build a life when you spend all your time working with the dead.

Here’s the problem: unlike, say Amores Perros, which juggles its tales in a way that keeps us invested in all of them simultaneously, Hereafter makes us wish the damn thing would settle down with one story and tell it properly.  Just as we get in to a particular character’s life, the film changes focus and we feel frustrated.  Hereafter would have been much better served by telling its three stories one a time, then putting them together in last 15 minutes. 

I like Clint Eastwood.  I like this film’s performers.  I’d have loved to have gotten lost in Hereafter.  But this film errs in its structure, and it doesn’t work as well as it could.  Bummer.

Made in Dagenham

I’d watch Sally Hawkins walk her dog. 

This is not a beautiful or glamorous woman, but I’d have a thousand dinners with her before I’d so much as share a happy meal with Angelina Jolie.  Hawkins has an intelligence and vitality that makes her absolutely fascinating. 

In Made in Dagenham, which tells a true story, Hawkins plays Rita O’Grady.  In 1968, O’Grady led the women of the Dagenham Ford plant on a strike for a revolutionary proposition: equal pay for equal work.  It was something nobody else was even thinking about – most people just accepted that women should make less than men because, well, because that’s the way it had always been.  The film takes O’Grady from just another happy worker to full-fledged labor leader, and it shows how she grew into the role while maintaining her decency and discovering her extraordinary ability to lead.  Working with Albert Passingham (the brilliant Bob Hoskins), she carried her fight all the way to the top levels of British government and won.  She won because she was right, but she also won because she realized she could.

Hawkins endows Rita O’Grady with all the traits of an outstanding leader: drive, vision, empathy, organizational skill, and the ability to make her case.  She’s a pleasure to watch, and she transforms Made in Dagenham from just another earnest biopic to a bright, compelling, and wildly entertaining time at the movies.  I loved Made in Dagenham, and I can’t wait to see what Hawkins does next.