Last year, London Film Festival organizers managed to secure a pair of world premieres — “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and the John Lennon bio “Nowhere Boy” — to open and close proceedings. This year, they haven’t been so lucky, bookending the festival’s 54th edition with two hot tickets from Toronto instead.
With that said, they’re still thoroughly respectable, and suitably British, picks. We already knew that Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” would kick off the festival; now comes confirmation that the closing night gala is Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours,” which stars James Franco in the well-known survival story of mountaineer Aron Ralston. The film reunites Boyle with producer Christian Colson and writer Simon Beaufoy; you may recall that a certain other collaboration between the trio closed out the London fest two years ago.
Both films will be making their European premieres at the festival, which runs from October 13 to 28. The news suggests that, after luring out a number of American journos last year, the LFF is setting its sights a little closer to home. Statements from Boyle and LFF director Sandra Hebron after the cut.
127 HOURS is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s remarkable adventure to save himself after a falling boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, abseil a 65 foot rock face and hike over eight miles before he is finally rescued. A visceral thrilling story that will take an audience on a never before experienced journey and prove what we can do when we choose life.
Sandra Hebron, the Festival’s Artistic Director comments: “Having closed the festival with SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE in 2008, it is unprecedented for us to choose a Closing Night film from the same director only two years later. But 127 HOURS was the obvious choice for us – with filmmaking as bold and adventurous as its subject matter, it confirms Danny Boyle as one of the World’s finest and most visionary directors, and will be a very fitting close to the festival.”
Danny Boyle comments, “I am honoured and delighted that 127 HOURS has been selected to close the BFI London Film Festival. LFF played a vital role in the journey of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE in 2008 and it’s great to be bringing new work here and renewing a happy partnership. I can’t wait to unveil the new film and I hope it provides a worthy climax to what will hopefully be two weeks of great movies for our city.”
[Photo: Empire Online]
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11 responses to “‘127 Hours’ to close London Film Festival”
And hopefully it’ll be better and less dishonest than that “certain other collaboration.”
Am I the only person who doesn’t want to see this film? Everyone seems to be raving about it, but it just seems rather Oscarbaity to be any good. The immortal words ‘based on a true story’ normally send me running from the cinema.
Hopefully the rest of the festival will be better. May even score some press tickets this year!
I enjoy James Franco and he always chooses good work, so I’m cautiously optimistic. Boyle, Beaufoy, and Colson all have their Oscars, so I hope that they don’t pander to the voters with Oscar bait-like material because, for me anyway, this seems like it could be a truly interesting story.
This story, by its very nature, would be very hard to turn into pure Oscar bait material. It’s about one guy trying to survive stranded in the mountains. That and there’s supposedly thirty minutes to an hour without dialogue.
“Everyone seems to be raving about it”
Who? I have yet to hear from anyone who’s seen it. Personally, my interest in the source story is minimal.
How can you not be amazed by the true story?
Just saw the first trailer at Movie-Con at the BFI Southbank. Danny Boyle was there with Christian Colson to present it, having literally run straight from the editing suite with the trailer to show us first.
Looked pretty bad.
Cut like Slumdog within an inch of it’s life, the digital photography looked cheap… like one giant Kodak ad. Franco looks great, and Mara looks effective in what’s sure to be a tiny role. But it looks like shoestring Castaway. And Franco’s scream to the heavens after getting trapped was comical.
Disclaimer though, I think Danny Boyle is the master of the third act fuck up, only truly loving A Life Less Ordinary which puts me in the minority. Charming, intelligent guy… But I just don’t connect with his films, finding they tail off towards the end. Yes, including Slumdog… Which two years later, feels fruitless to get into now.
The whole premise seems to scream for Danny Boyle to overdo the stylistic embellishments: hallucinations, shaky-cam POVs, etc. That kind of formal hyperactivity drained a lot of the power of Touching the Void for me, and I can only imagine there’ll be more of it coming from Boyle. But if he’s found a way to power a whole film out of this scenario without souping up an awful scrape into something jittery and off-puttingly flamboyant, more power to him.
He said he wanted to make something completely different to Touching the Void, but it just looked cheap.
Although hearing that they had James Franco tied to set with a chain so he couldn’t move away was pretty funny.
Perhaps ‘raving’ was the wrong word, but its presence on the sidebar of this website (and optimistic mentions of it on other Awards-esque websites such as HitFix) seems to imply that some people certainly think it may be one to watch.
I’ve seen a cut of this film, and it is incredible! Just wait..