First Clip From Danny Boyle's '127 Hours'; Just How Intense Is This Film, Anyway?

I'm again breaking the general (if rather loose) /Film mandate against posting clips to present to you the first clip from Danny Boyle's new film 127 Hours, which in the past two weeks has been taking the festival circuit by storm. And by ambulance: at screenings during both the Telluride and TIFF festivals, audience members reportedly required medical attention due to the intensity of the film's amputation sequence. We knew that Danny Boyle wanted to create a visceral, intense and uncomfortable experience. Has he truly succeeded, or is reaction to the film being blown out of proportion?

The clip comes by way of CinemaBlend, but don't worry — it doesn't give up any of the nail-biting moments that are the core of the film. Like the first trailer, the clip takes place before the accident that traps hiker Aron Ralston (James Franco) in a crevasse, eventually forcing him to take drastic action in order to survive.

And that drastic action has reportedly provoked an extreme response in several festival-goers. At two different Telluride screenings of the film, viewers reacted with light-headedness and panic to the intensity (so we're led to believe) of Boyle's film. [Anne Thompson]

And then there was last night's TIFF screening, at which The Torontoist reports "at 7:45, one attendee in the balcony suffered a seizure at the same time as, in the orchestra below, two people apparently briefly lost consciousness." Security and paramedics attended to all the fallen, and fifteen minutes later everyone was reportedly fine, and without even a hospital visit.

We hear about this sort of thing frequently enough that I don't put too much stock in it. (See reports for Pulp Fiction, Antichrist, Irreversible and many more.) But at the same time, I've seen serious reactions to intense films in person at TIFF (A Hole in My Heart and Inside, in 2004 and 2007, respectively) and both at press screenings. Perhaps it's just something about the festival atmosphere where intense anticipation and lack of proper food and sleep can predispose  some viewers towards extreme physical reactions.

Then again, Peter's Telluride review said the film is rather gore-heavy at one point, as well as being occasionally gut-wrenching, so perhaps seeing someone pass out at a 127 Hours screening will be something we all have in common come this fall.