EBHappy on-sale day to Diana Spechler and SKINNY!
In honor of this happy occasion, we’re introducing a new series here on the Olive Reader. As we head into the summer, some of our writers will share their favorites in other categories besides books—movies, TV shows, music, etc. They have good taste, I promise! So today we’re starting with Diana’s thoughts on 127 Hours, the perfect Valentine’s Day movie.
After watching 127 Hours on Valentine’s Day, because nothing says romance like a movie about a guy who chops off his arm, I couldn’t sleep. Really, I can never sleep, but on this particular night, I squirmed, imagining severing my arm from my body.
When Aron Ralston, the man on whom James Franco’s character is based, appeared in the news in 2003, I thought, idiotically, “What an idiot.” I was living out west then, where people have “gear” and bear spray and belay partners, and talk about out-swimming avalanches. I fancied myself an expert on wilderness safety. But my judgment was akin to, “She was askin’ for it in that short dress of hers.”
If I ever got stuck the way Ralston got stuck, I wouldn’t know how to (spoiler alert) break the two bones that needed breaking, tie a tourniquet, and then perform an amputation on myself with a dull pocket knife. Even if I did know what to do, I’d be too scared to do it. I’d die in a canyon in Utah, hoarding a pointless limb.
When the movie ended, I watched online interviews with Aron Ralston because, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I’d fallen in love with him (or at least with James Franco), not to mention with the movie, an amazing feat in storytelling. How incredible to pull off a nail-biter when the audience already knows the ending. How incredible to pull off a narrative with only one significant character, whose flip cam acts as his sidekick, his decomposing arm as his antagonist.
Lying awake, I recalled times when I’d been my own antagonist—when the party would have been fine had I skipped that last tequila shot; when I said, “No problem,” instead of, “Stay far away from me;” when I’d maintained dead relationships out of fear of cutting them off.
In an interview, Aron Ralston said that hacking through his arm wasn’t so bad until he reached the nerve, which he compared to a string of spaghetti. When he saw it, he thought, “This is going to hurt,” and then he sliced through it anyway. Later, he told an interviewer, “Happiest moment of my life.”
