Harrowing tale of survival celebrates the triumph of the human spirit

I KNOW I am probably in a minority of one but, even if we took Danny Boyle’s intended message at face value, there was something rather sickening about the way he lauded the resilience of his subjects in Slumdog Millionaire. It tended to imply that there is something honourable about being downtrodden.

To my mind, that starry-eyed view of poverty appeals more to the Western middle classes rather than reflecting the true aspirations of the poor. But Boyle, it seems, can’t help returning, again and again, to material that’s heavy on physical pain, mental paranoia and personal treachery. Before Slumdog, Boyle was probably best known as the gutter visionary behind Trainspotting, which leapt into the toilet with a band of Edinburgh heroin addicts. Then there was human dismemberment in Shallow Grave, the dying of the sun in the sci-fi Sunshine, and fleshing-eating psycho-zombies in 28 Days Later. We were beginning to wonder if Danny Boyle didn’t like humankind very much.

In 127 Hours which I got to see at the weekend, however, Boyle has redeemed himself. He honours the appeal of solitude while at the same time rejoicing in the wonderful necessity of other people. Adapted fromBetween a Rock and a Hard Place, a memoir by Aron Ralston, the movie takes as its subject the five-day period when, following a freak calamity in a Utah canyon in 2003, a young climber’s right arm is pinned by a falling boulder. Starvation and dehydration loom even though the pain of the injury has subsided. Suddenly, his world has become very well-defined. There is the crevice. There is the slit of sky above, crossed by an eagle on its regular flight path. He screams for help, but who can hear? For anyone to happen to discover him is unthinkable. Having told no one exactly where he was going, he knew that if he were to survive, he would have to help himself. He will die if he doesn’t do something.