Sunshine

I never heard of Sunshine, never saw the trailers for Sunshine, and don't even like sunshine (not really), but this latest Danny Boyle flick is definitely worth checking out. Deeply flawed in places, yet also beautifully transcendent in others, Sunshine will probably appeal more to sci-fi fans than to the general public.

The movie starts off slow and understated (perhaps too much), and struck me at first as a poor reproduction of the opening act of Alien. The characters are not as engaging as in that classic movie, however, and there is not enough development to really know or care that much about them. Despite all this though, Boyle somehow manages to create tension and emotional depth as the crew members are slowly forced to choose to sacrifice fellow members for the greater good.

Their mission is to detonate a huge nuclear bomb in the heart of the sun in the hopes of reigniting it after it has started dying from bombardment of left over plasma from the Big Bang (or something like that). I didn't worry too much about it as I am not an astrophysicist (despite what my resume says) and it seemed plausible enough. Basically, they are the last hope to save mankind, which is slowly dying an icy death on Earth. At times you really feel the magnitude of their task at hand, though I thought the gravity of the situation could have been a bit better developed.

As they are passing Mercury, they become aware that the spaceship from the previously failed mission is still intact, and they decide to try to see if they can intercept it in order to deliver a second payload into the sun (after all, two's better than one, and there are not enough resources left on earth for a third attempt). As they veer off course from their primary directive, that's when the sh*t begins to hit the fan (or the sun, as it were).

Up until this point, the story had been slowly building, and I had become totally engrossed in it. Through good direction, amazing visuals, and a thickening plot, they had overcome my initial lukewarm reception of the movie. Unfortunately (you knew that was coming, didn't you), this also introduces a stupid and unnecessary plot point that begins to turn the film into a bit of a stupid, space slash-em-up movie.

There are references to 2001, 2010, Alien, and a bunch of other sci-fi classics, complete with the blowing through the airlock scene. Though the reference that stood out most to me was from The Abyss. I remember when I watched the scene in that 1989 classic where Ed Harris holds Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as she deliberately chooses to drown (as it is their only hope that at least one of them can make it back to the lab), at the time it was one of the most powerful and intense scenes I had ever seen on film. There are several scenes in Sunshine that have a similar feel and nearly approach it in emotional depth.

Up to this point I've discussed nothing but the flaws of Sunshine (of which there are many), so why, you may ask, am I still giving it 6 out of 7 skinks on my Skink Scale? Well, despite all its shortcomings, Sunshine still manages to carry a transcendent tone that is bigger than all of its parts. It had that intangible quality of a certain emotional resonance that carries with you long after the movie is over. This is exactly the quality that Blood Diamond was missing for me, even though that movie is far superior on many fronts.

I guess I am also a sucker for things that deal with extreme isolation, and there is nothing more isolating than being cast-off and alone in space. It has something to do with identity, connectiveness, and the meaning and relativity of existence (little things like that). I'll talk to my therapist more about it the next time I see her. Whatever it is, I think that it has never been captured more beautifully and succinctly than in David Bowie's 1969 song Space Oddity: "Here, am I floating round my tin can. Far above the moon. Planet earth is blue, and theres nothing I can do..."


Sunshine (2007)
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans
Directed by: Danny Boyle

(6 out of 7 skinks)