Aron Ralston has repeatedly seen his arm get severed. It’s the most contentious sequence in the movie 127 Hours, which is a fictionalized depiction of Ralston’s disastrous solo canyoneering expedition in 2003 in southern Utah’s Bluejohn Canyon.
Millions of moviegoers watched and judged what had been the most private of experiences, as Ralston described them in his 2004 memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Danny Boyle, the director of the fictional thriller had an interview with Yahoo Entertainment where he sat and discussed his thoughts on the most nerve recking scene ever, which left a large audience feeling light-headed when they left the theatres
Danny Boyle felt the audience would need a reason to watch the amputation scene
The five-minute sequence in Danny Boyle’s true-life thriller 127 Hours, in which outdoorsman Aaron Ralston played by actor James Franco is forced to break the bones in his arm and then slowly amputate it in order to escape, left a huge impact on the audience. Boyle, during his interview with Yahoo Entertainment, revealed that in order for that sequence to work, the filmmaker realized at the time that he had to show it become the protagonist’s last resort. Explaining his mindset, Boyle said,
“I thought the only way you’re ever going to be able to watch him cut his arm off, is if you believe that’s the only thing he can do, and if you think you would do that as well.”
He added,
“And that was the idea of the film: Can we get the audience to that point where they think, ‘Do it. Just do it.’? Because that’s basically where he arrived.”
Aron Ralston, an explorer who was trekking in Utah when he became stranded in a remote canyon for five days, is the subject of the true-life story 127 Hours. Ralston was compelled to amputate his crushed limb above the wrist in order to escape because he had no cell phone and was certain that rescue agencies did not know where he was and were unlikely to search for him.
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Danny Boyle hired a special makeup designer to shoot the amputation scene
Boyle continued his interview where he explained how he actually had to hire a special make-up artist in order to shoot the graphic sequence of the movie. Using layers of fiberglass, steel bone, silicone, fibrous muscle and tendon, functional veins and arteries, and translucent silicone skin with a thin coating of subcutaneous silicone fat, makeup designer Tony Gardner helped build false arm rigs.
“The amazing prosthetics [team] built these arms and then Franco, we just left him to it, cause it was a bit like that, he just had to hack it off. It was a bit like Terminator for a while, because obviously it’s not a real arm. But there are other bits of it like, ‘Oh my God, it’s for real.”
Given how dramatic Ralston’s real-life story actually was, Boyle and his team didn’t have to add anything to it. Filmmaker Boyle then went on to explain how while directing nonfiction, one has to know how to balance authenticity and creativity while doing the story justice.
Source: Yahoo Entertainment
