Film: 127 Hours (2010)
Moment: Aron cuts off his arm
What makes this particular amputation so difficult to watch is that, unlike the sort of dismemberment featured in a typical horror film, the arm doesn’t come off in a sudden explosion of gushing blood but rather several minutes (longer for the character himself) of unimaginable, bone-snapping agony – often filmed in gory close-up by director Danny Boyle. Given that Ralston is performing the amputation on himself, not to mention that we’ve just spent nearly two hours trapped down in that canyon with him, there’s also an aura of queasy over-identification with the character’s plight: What if it were my arm pinned beneath that rock? Would I be capable of severing my own tendon with a pair of tiny grooming scissors?