Minor spoilers present!
A number of images came to mind Saturday night after I saw the Danny Boyle directed film Sunshine. One that stood out was the archival footage of the Hindenburg going down in flames with the radio announcer’s tinny, crackling voice, the man in tears crying out, “Oh the humanity.” Even though those words have become more or less a punchline for many comedic films recently, they lent themselves to a different meaning when describing this tense sci-fi thriller.
Fifty years into the future a team of scientists are sent on a mission to re-ignite the sun in order to save the earth from freezing over. We aren’t burdened with a twenty minute expository speech from some douchey windbag explaining what got us to this point, it’s irrelevant for the scope of this film. Here we are. This is similar to the symbiotic relationship the team of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland had with their audience with 28 Days Later by throwing us into the worst possible scenario we can imagine. Done. Now deal with it.
Everyone is at risk in Sunshine. There is no hierarchy on screen or off. Each character and the actor who plays him or her can dissolve into vapors of stardust. You’re not dealing with an event movie where logistically the star has to remain alive by the time we get to the last frame. This is a stripped down, visually pulsating film that compacts many fresh elements while giving a nod to sci-fi films of the past. Sure, the filmmakers owe a lot to Alien, 2001 and the like but there’s no denying that in its language. Those films act as a jumping off point. The artifice is no where to be found and what we are left with is a clean slate that feels like an original new wave of genre filmmaking.
The film’s special effects had a hand crafted feel. Reflective surfaces, double imagery and geometric shapes fused together to bridge the action were beautiful to witness. In a lot of ways I found Sunshine to almost be some sort of cosmic companion piece to The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky’s gravely under appreciated film about how fragile man really is. The message that could be extracted here is no one man is greater than the good of mankind. The mission is everything. That’s quite a statement considering the state of the world we live in.
If Sunshine represents the shape of things to come it would be welcome. It was refreshing to be entertained and not talked down to at the same time. Imagine that.
Related: The Sunshine production blog.
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