In 127 Hours, daredevil rock climber Aron Ralston (played by James Franco) is pinned to the inside of a deep, narrow canyon wall by an immense boulder. He tries to use his engineering skills to escape, and counts the hours left until he will run out of food and water on his stopwatch. The story cuts out of the canyon from time to time, to show key moments in his relationships with family, girlfriends and a coworker. These underscore his isolation, anti-social detachment and avoidance of intimacy.
In time, he must sacrifice his own limb in order to escape, and all of his self-examination and determination to survive culminates in the moment of epiphany when he yells, “I need help!” to passing hikers on the trail out.
127 Hours – The Soundtrack
The score is written by A.R. Rahman, who collaborated with Grammy-nominated Dido, and includes tracks by Sigur Ros and Free Blood. It adds tremendous punch and vigor to the story, and along with Simon Beaufoy and Danny Boyle’s skin tight screenplay and Jon Harris’ precise editing, it keeps us glued to our seats.
The music is full of hope and a boundless determination for survival. It is playful, yet determined, just as the hero at the story’s center is. The score has a range from panic to celebration, from melancholy to liberation. Songs such as, “If I Rise” (Dido and Rahman) are haunting and yet somehow also soothing in their low key spirituality. “Liberation” (Rahman) carries heart-thumping suspense with its dizzying electronic madness. “The Canyon” uses the clarinet to capture the vast peace of the Utah desert.
127 Hours – Music and Screenwriting
While screenwriters can’t score their own films, they can pre-score it by choosing and playing songs that seem to match the mood and meaning of the story they are working on. The same is true for writers of fiction and nonfiction books, whose work may never see the screen. Anyone writing about anything with a theme can and should find their story’s theme song, and keep it close by, like a good friend to accompany them on the journey of writing well.
Both of the Academy Award winning films Chariots of Fire and Rocky were based on true stories, and both had unforgettable soundtracks. Some might even go so far as to say that a large part of the success of these films had to do with the musical accompaniment.
Not surprisingly, 127 hours’ chief composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) is nominated for Best Song and best score in this year’s Academy Awards. The film is also nominated for Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Candace Kearns Read - I am the creator of the website and blog: The Movie of Your Life: Shaping True Story into Screenplay. Are you interested in writing ...
Join the Conversation