1) 127 Hours
There’s a reason why the top two movies on this list are based on true stories. Fictional tales show us what the will of human spirit could possibly achieve. The movies based on real stories show us what that will has achieved. They offer concrete standards against which we can measure ourselves. And isn’t that partly why we watch these movies? To see people struggle and to ask ourselves if we could handle the same? I don’t know if I could handle what Aron Ralston went through.
In the spring of 2003, Aron (played by James Franco) goes hiking alone through Blue John Canyon in Wayne County, Utah. While descending a narrow canyon, he dislodges a loose boulder that sends them both tumbling to the bottom. And this is where real life becomes stranger than fiction: Aron falls in such a way that he lands on his feet, with the boulder wedged in between the canyon’s narrow walls and his right hand caught in between. The look on Franco’s face as Aron realizes the situation he’s in, just as the title card appears, is one of the most horrifying moments in modern cinema.
Aron’s story went national when it happened, meaning you probably already know how the movie ends, but as it so often goes with survival movies, you’re not watching for how it ends, but for how it middles. What goes through a person’s mind in Aron’s situation? What strategies does he attempt? You also watch to see if the filmmaker can keep a story that takes place in one location with one person interesting. If all this is handled well, then Aron becomes a person instead of a news story, and the ending organically develops much more significance. I’ll come right out and say that writer Simon Beaufoy and director Danny Boyle handle things masterfully.
I don’t know if I have Aron’s strength, or Joe Simpson’s strength, or the will of that Uruguayan rugby team in Alive, and I hope I never have to find out if I do, but their stories are each a reminder that our time here is precious as well as precarious. I think everyone I just mentioned completely appreciated their lives, which is why when they faced losing those lives, they fought as hard as they did to keep them. Perhaps the key to survival is really living while we can.