Dir. Danny Boyle, 2007
Sunshine belongs to that special niche that the science fiction genre has reserved for its more contemplative mode—the space film. With ambitions towards its clear antecedents, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Danny Boyle’s new movie isn’t really about outer space at all. Instead, Sunshine’s cosmic perspective is a vantage point from which it tries, and sometimes succeeds, to consider what it is to be human.
Chronicling a mission to re-ignite our dying star, Sunshine never gets snagged on the heavy-handed exposition or high-tech fetishism that hurts so many sci-fi films. Meanwhile, the casts’ performances are passable but never outstanding, a fact which works for the film because its true star (sorry) is its stellar landscapes and solar ambiance. I typically don’t go in for special effects spectacles, but Boyle, despite some cinematographic gratuity in other areas, is prudent and creative in rendering the Sun in both austere, astronomical beauty and incendiary horror.
Light, in its variegated forms, is the central motif of Sunshine. It is the illumination of knowledge, the progenitor of life, and the searing omni-power embodied in the burning bush. It’s strange that the director has claimed that this is a film about atheism, because Sunshine strikes me as a flawed, but earnest attempt at spiritualism. At its core, Sunshine is about, to use the words of Kierkegaard, “the fear and trembling” of the divine encounter. It considers the sacrifice of allowing one’s self to be subsumed by the light and the sublimity of such a sacrifice's consequences. Sunshine possesses a terrified desire to stare into the Sun and a burning faith that it won’t be blinded.
This is not a perfect movie. Its latter half suffers particularly from the introduction of a villain who seems to be Mr. Kurtz by way of Nightmare on Elmstreet and Hellraiser. However, when at its best, Sunshine tries to deliver on the best voyeuristic and transcendent impulses of cinema—to look into the heart of what can’t be seen and to revel in the experience.
Sunshine belongs to that special niche that the science fiction genre has reserved for its more contemplative mode—the space film. With ambitions towards its clear antecedents, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Danny Boyle’s new movie isn’t really about outer space at all. Instead, Sunshine’s cosmic perspective is a vantage point from which it tries, and sometimes succeeds, to consider what it is to be human.
Chronicling a mission to re-ignite our dying star, Sunshine never gets snagged on the heavy-handed exposition or high-tech fetishism that hurts so many sci-fi films. Meanwhile, the casts’ performances are passable but never outstanding, a fact which works for the film because its true star (sorry) is its stellar landscapes and solar ambiance. I typically don’t go in for special effects spectacles, but Boyle, despite some cinematographic gratuity in other areas, is prudent and creative in rendering the Sun in both austere, astronomical beauty and incendiary horror.
Light, in its variegated forms, is the central motif of Sunshine. It is the illumination of knowledge, the progenitor of life, and the searing omni-power embodied in the burning bush. It’s strange that the director has claimed that this is a film about atheism, because Sunshine strikes me as a flawed, but earnest attempt at spiritualism. At its core, Sunshine is about, to use the words of Kierkegaard, “the fear and trembling” of the divine encounter. It considers the sacrifice of allowing one’s self to be subsumed by the light and the sublimity of such a sacrifice's consequences. Sunshine possesses a terrified desire to stare into the Sun and a burning faith that it won’t be blinded.
This is not a perfect movie. Its latter half suffers particularly from the introduction of a villain who seems to be Mr. Kurtz by way of Nightmare on Elmstreet and Hellraiser. However, when at its best, Sunshine tries to deliver on the best voyeuristic and transcendent impulses of cinema—to look into the heart of what can’t be seen and to revel in the experience.
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