A.O. Scott applauds 127 Hours & The Way Back

Not formal reviews on the Times movie page yet — of course, those will wait for the movies to be released — but A.O. Scott has a lot of praise for two of today’s Telluride standouts on this artsblog which give us a clear idea of his enthusiasm. He says 127 Hours made an “unannounced sneak appearance,” a festival tradition, and recaps the harrowing circumstances recreated by James Franco as hiker Aron Ralston:

You may remember the story: trapped in a narrow crevice in a deep canyon, Mr. Ralston escaped by cutting off part of his right arm, which was pinned against a rock.

His experience is disconcerting enough just to think about, and to see it recreated, in Mr. Boyle’s characteristically fast-moving, immersive style, is jarring, thrilling and weirdly funny. At a question-and-answer session after the first screening on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Boyle — director of “Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later” and of course “Slumdog Millionaire,” which snuck into Telluride two years ago — described himself as a thoroughly “urban” type with no great love for or interest in nature. And the jangly, jumpy energy he brings to a story of silence, solitude and confinement gives the film an irreverent kick that deepens and sharpens its emotional and spiritual insights.

Scott compares The Way Back to earlier Peter Weir films that have shown “a reverence for the beauties and terrors of nature,” like Picnic at Hanging Rock, “in which the topography of his native country assumes a haunting, even demonic presence.”

Compared to Mr. Boyle’s, Mr. Weir’s style is stately, almost classical, and the astonishing story he has to tell in the new movie — about a group of men who escaped from a Soviet Labor camp in 1941 and walked from Siberia to India — has an old-fashioned gravity and grandeur. There are fine performances from Ed Harris, Sioarse Ronan and Jim Sturgess as Januzs, the Polish prisoner who leads the trek toward freedom, and breathtaking images of tundra, desert forest and grassland.