Jayclops' musings on his favorite pasttime and escape.
It’s gonna be a bright, sunshiny day.
July 21, 2007Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007)
Early on during the first three months of the year, I was giddy up with the news that Danny Boyle will be directing a space movie about the sun dying and all the catastrophic orchestrations of a sci-fi thriller it promises to be (confession: only saw Trainspotting and Millions). Plus the thought of seeing it months before centric America sees it, like people in Europe (which I say is way cooler), should be on the to-do list came April. And then I miss it. Very anticlimactic. I saw it just over the weekend on bootleg with Russian subtitles and just as I thought, I sure would have a blast a hundred times over had I viewed it on wide screen. 
Now it must be said, that running a show like Sunshine is a tough act, because you always have great space epics like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky’s Solaris in hindsight. It’s pretty much understandable, where critics are goaded at how weak the final act is considering the promise and amount of tension the filmmakers have built. Not to mention philosophical and spiritual ruminations on the nature of space travel that will have Solaris and 2001 fans nostalgic and brimming with expectations. But this is not to say that Boyle’s handiwork is a complete fiasco; which I think it’s not. In fact, it’s one of the most satisfying early 2007 offerings so far.
Eight people are launched into space called Icarus II (with the obvious reference to the Greek myth), a second manned mission to sun after the first Icarus shuttle mysteriously broke down on its path – the captain, the navigator, a biologist (Michelle Yeoh), an engineer (Chris Evans), a space pilot (Rose Byrne), a comms officer, a psychologist and a physicist (Cillian Murphy). Forget defying laws of physics here, but the ship protected by gold shields will deliver a nuclear payload supposed to ignite the dying sun thus saving mankind from extinction. Daunting as their mission is, the crew is just about to discover the real terror other than the fact that they may not be able come back after all.
It’s pretty geeky science but nothing that will prompt you to dive into encyclopedia and physics textbooks. Garland, who wrote the screenplay manages to fuse tension, character dynamics and the inevitable metaphysical aspects of a space thriller but there is a lot more to be wanted in terms character justification. It makes up though in isolated scenes of visual spectacle most notably in scenes where a character or the crew gaze at the sun thru protected sunglasses (I imagine how multi-coated it can be). Boyle’s frenetic camerawork does wonders for instance when it is inside the space suits giving us the claustrophobic feel and mounting fear though it can be annoying during the ending montage.
The space walk, where the captain (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Capa, the physicist (Murphy) repairs the damaged shields, is breathtaking scene and the voice of the rebelling super-computer is an obvious homage to 2001's HAL 9000; the existence of unwanted visitos to Solaris but pales in comparison as to the depth and importance. Psychologist Searle (Cliff Curtis) seems to provide the moral core of the characters, we find him retreating into the ocular room more than once to be engulfed in the marvel of the sun.
The characters would start to dwindle and die terrifying deaths up to the last act where the shift can get messy and somehow anticlimactic. The doom seems to be apparent and I get it that the biggest gripe would really come from the major shift. Man, in the end, gets to see the promise of a new day, and as the doomed crew set the controls of the sun, this should move the core of man's heart.
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