James Franco's 127 HOURS with Danny Boyle

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

James Franco's most challenging role of his career will be as Aron Ralston in 127 Hours, the movie re-telling those six terrifying days of him being trapped under an 800 pound boulder during a lone hike in Utah, which ended in him cutting off his own arm to set himself free. In the mood of Cast Away or I Am Legend but much, much more claustrophobic - Simon Beaufoy's script, which Danny Boyle will direct this March is said to contain NO DIALOGUE for the first hour or so. Just character movement, action, suggestion. Like a Sergio Leone picture I guess, but greatly heightened and on a more traumatic emotional level. They'll be no gimmick tricks to this one with the insertion of a volleyball, a mobile phone or a dog - it's strictly no dialogue what-so-ever. I would love to actually see the movie go further and have no soundtrack or score to make it feel as matter-of-fact as possible but maybe I'm asking too much of Joe Popcorn to sit through that kind of picture when he can rush to another theatre and pick up his 3-D glasses and experience his eyes gauge out at the calorie heavy images flooding back from the screen. Ah I'm only joking, I love those kind of movies too. In thinking about 127 Hours, I've tried to recall what other movies are significant for their lack of dialogue. I'm guessing the currently filming Buried - that movie with Green Lantern/Deadpool trapped in a coffin six feet under will be pretty tough going for the audience, what with it just being in one location but Reynolds' character will have his mobile, so there's interaction there at least. The first actual example from history I thought of was Once Upon A Time in the West's famous opening which contains no speaking dialogue for about 15 minutes. It's significant too that in the whole movie, only 15 PAGES of script make up the full movie's dialogue, and most of that is churned out in a few key exposition-like scenes. The rest is all suggestion. I couldn't find the whole opening but here's a big snippet...

The opening of Leone's other great masterpiece The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is similar for it's lack of dialogue. Or who can forget Joss Whedon's response to his series being too talky-talky with the show's biggest highlight Hush... Of course the undisputed narrative winner would be Wall*E which has it's first dialogue play-off between WALL·E and EVE 22 minutes into the movie and goes a massive 39 MINUTES without human dialogue. Another indicator why Pixar are just working on a different level to anything else right now. The most astonishing completely no dialogue movie ever would be Baraka, the highly inventive and pain-stakingly put together movie from director Ron Fricke, which tells it's story through emotions and feelings from people and places that reside on our planet. Roger Ebert on 16.09.08 put it best when speaking of the Blu-ray transfer...

If man sends another Voyager to the distant stars and it can carry only one film on board, that film might be "Baraka." It uses no language, so needs no translation. It speaks in magnificent images, natural sounds, and music both composed and discovered. It regards our planet and the life upon it. It stands outside of historical time. To another race, it would communicate: This is what you would see if you came here. Of course this will all long since have disappeared when the spacecraft is discovered.