127 Hours vs Shoot the Moon

Watched 127 Hours last night. Although I had read the reviews and was looking forward to it, nothing, it felt, had prepared me for one of the most gruesome scenes in cinema. To mitigate the sense of terror and shock, I had to quickly put on a family drama before attempting to go to bed to dispel some of its lingering images. That said, the film is extremely well-made and acted, and certainly a much better work than the director's another recent success Millennium Slumdog. Paradoxically, while the film is very uplifting and with a touching finale, I also find myself questioning the need of making such a (near documentary) film about the real life accident. But then while I covered my eyes at one or two of the scenes, I had never attempted to reach the remote control to press the 'stop' mode. Isn't it strange that we can both dread and yet continue the terrifying experience? Shoot the Moon, the film with a romantic cover on its DVD turned out to be the worst follow-up after 127 Hours: it brings another kind of horror and torture, that in the most intimate of human relationships. Despite its critical acclaims when it first came out, I didn't enjoy it at all. This was perhaps in no small part, due to the fact I was looking for an escape after 127 Hours.