6) 127 Hours
I know a number of people who absolutely refuse to watch 127 Hours because they assume it consists of an hour and a half of torturous scenes culminating in a gruesome one involving a man severing off his own arm. And that’s sort of what it is, essentially. I don’t know how much I thought of it up to the climactic moment of that scene with the knife. It was effective, and surprisingly engaging for consisting mostly of a dude in a hole, but pretty excruciating for the most part, in probably a good way. But it was the ending that got to me, and it was perhaps a scene that only Danny Boyle could pull off in that kind of way.
The typical purpose of movies like 127 Hours, to be a tad simplistic, is to put us in the protagonist’s shoes, to experience the emotions that they are feeling from scene to scene. We feel a bit distant to James Franco’s Aron Ralston at first, as he’s portrayed as a bit of a likeable weirdo, but we’re soon in the shit with him, grimacing at his attempts to break free from his predicament, and cringing over watching through our hands as he takes the most extreme action he could possibly take.
The euphoria after he escapes the cave, a mixture of delirium from exposure and blood loss and god knows what else he would be going through after such an ordeal, as well as relief at the prospect of still being alive, the cathartic sequence where he’s finally saved is more than satisfying. It’s essential. It’s a celebration of triumph at great cost, and an acknowledgement of the nightmare that has ended, depicted in a frantic and jarring and wonderful way by Boyle. It turns it from a very good film to a truly great one.