It was a bad day at the movies and I loved it

The Mill Valley Film Festival was winding down and it seemed a darn shame not to experience the annual autumn movie marathon. There is nothing else in the theaters right now and going to see the premiere of TRUST by local filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto and the MVFF's screening of 127 HOURS by Oscar winner Danny Boyle, seemed like a no brainer in a town too cute to be real.

What I wasn't prepared for was the physical impact of both these films.

I haven't had the sensation that I wanted to run out of the theater mid-movie since seeing GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS. Now, mind you, just like the aforementioned 1994 film, these are good films. Nothing flagrant or gratuitously violent about them -- just hard to watch.

Maybe it was because I knew what was coming, so that anticipation of where things were going drove me crazy. Plus, in both cases, the filmmakers didn't keep the plot line secret.

127 HOURS is based on the memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston. It is the biographical recounting of a hiker's day trip that turns bad in Utah's Canyonlands Recreation area, when he falls down a rock chasm and spends 127 HOURS trying to release his arm which is wedged between two rocks. This ordeal costs him his arm and most of the audience knew what was to befall him going into the theater because of the publicity from the actual event in 2003.

During the after show interview with the director, Mr. Boyle describes previous screenings, where audience members threw up or left the theater. I was in the latter group. I wimped out! But being a good samaritan and editor, I waiting for the perfect scene cut to escape my angst.

This was a bad day for emotional baggage, but a really good day for fine film making.

Next we turn to TRUST, a film that took 7 years to make and what you would call a true documentary. The backstory behind the making of the film is just as compelling as the film itself. When the wife and principle director of the Albany Park Theater Project in Chicago is diagnosed and dies of cancer during the almost decade long commitment to shooting the film, most of the project was rejected and the film makers had to start over from scratch.

Nancy and Kenji began again with the story of an 18-year-old rape survivor, who is propelled and supported by this teen theater project to work through her torment, isolation and drug addiction.

In this film, the survivor experiences a breakthrough from identifying herself with her early trauma through the re-enactment of her assault by fellow theater mates. This is hard stuff to watch and the producers Kelly and Yamamoto take you to the brink and pull you back just in time before your skin starts to really crawl.

Both of these films, show the audience that we are the fans that support the impossible. The viewer is taken to the edge of their seats knowing what to expect and knowing the outcome, but still feeling the moment to moment pain of tragedy and the will to survive against terrible odds.

What was the strongest element to both films was the audio. In 127 HOURS, we hear and feel each breath that the James Franco character takes and we hold ours with him. The sound of the crumbling rocks, the slicing of flesh, his groans and the crash his body makes as he falls into the abyss. All this is the sound track, not dialogue or narration, but the blunt humanness of the actor's bodily reactions.

With TRUST, the poetry that the actors evoke drives itself into the audience's subconscious and rings with dark fear. We begin to know this child who should have never experienced terrible pain and we feel ashamed being voyeurs to her tragedy and uplifted at the same time by the beauty of the theater's ritual.

I admit, I had to cover my eyes, plug my ears and finally leave the dark theater. These movies were scarier that facing Freddy on a Halloween night -- because they were real.