Rare is the event when timing, knowledge and preferences line up so that Ed and I actually make it to a movie. For reasons too obscure to relate, Ed likes to be inside the theater while the sun sets, and then have dinner afterward. And we don’t keep up with movie releases, so it’s hard to be spontaneous. And we only like good movies, good theaters, and minimal driving. But Friday, the stars lined up and within minutes of deciding to see a movie, my handy iPhone told me that 127 Hours, a movie I had actually heard of and wanted to see, was playing at the perfect time at a good theater near us.

127 Hours is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, the guy who amputated his own arm after being trapped by a boulder while hiking in Canyonlands National Park. I read his book (Between a Rock and a Hard Place) last year and was curious to see how it could possibly be made into a movie. Guy trapped by himself in an impossibly narrow canyon for 5 days followed by a gruesome self-surgery? Yikes. And yet they pulled it off. It was a great movie. And I am doubly impressed, because they further restricted themselves by not using any narration (but plenty of dialogue), and by including only the timeframe of the hike itself. The book had a lot of biographical build-up that was needed to establish the adventurous (and cocky, careless) nature of the protagonist. And to be fair, that stuff was justified because it was, after all, a memoir. But the movie accomplished all of that character development with just great acting, direction and writing, and with much better results. Not to knock the book, which was very well-written, but watching the movie on the big screen made me cry, and not just at the end.

Which begs the question, is this a movie most people would even enjoy? I wanted to see it because I read a review, and I read the review because I read the book, and I read the book because our friend Brian had seen Ralston speak at a charity event he attended despite reservations due to the subject manner. Brian raved about it. It’s an incredible story, an inspirational movie, and the arm is fake, you know.

That said, Ed and I both had related nightmares that night. But they weren’t about the amputation. They were about the rest of it.