Books & Film

That big-screen feeling

I look back on the ambitious failures of science fiction cinema over the last few decades and a few stand out: Mission to Mars, Supernova, 2010: Odyssey 2, The Fountain. These are movies made by the best in the business, and I walked out of each one dejected that it wasn’t the next 2001: A Space Odyssey or Planet of the Apes or Blade Runner or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Danny Boyle’s Sunshine isn’t among the list of ambitious failures. It’s entirely too good for that dubious distinction. But it’s also no Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which makes me wonder if it’s only average…and if that’s such a bad thing. You don’t find many average science fiction movies with such inner fire, with such a colossal vision for space travel, so sharp and amusing at nearly every turn.

I suppose Sunshine is Danny Boyle getting all the sci-fi movies he grew up watching out of his system, much in the way that he got zombie movies out of his system with 28 Days Later and its marginally superior sequel. He’s that age where Kubrick, Spielberg, George Pal would have been juicy influences. Just as George Romero, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci would have fed his appetite for flesh eating.

There’s a lot to applaud in Sunshine. I’ve seen it twice and will watch it again for these things:

  • A mesmerizing preoccupation with mankind’s capacity for wonder. This is a movie about travel to the sun, about that mightiest of secular gods’ demise, and our plans to revive it. Talk about the ultimate extension of sun worship. By feeding that which gives us life, we hope to improve our chances of living.
  • There’s no great depth of character here. Ridley Scott’s Nostromo crew still stands as the best ensemble cast based on chemistry and improv. However, the commitment of Sunshine’s actors raises character thinness to a level approximating real meat. Cillian Murphy’s message to his family near the beginning of the movie is pure gold. Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, and others do what they can with a script more interested in the larger metaphysical questions of humanity (the one versus the many) than in the niceties of any individual.
  • The production design and special effects are stupendous. Boyle’s cinematographer knows how to linger lovingly on an extremely wide angle shot of space action. I will give Sunshine props for being one of the most gorgeous sci-fi movies since Blade Runner. This applause isn’t superficial: Boyle succeeded smashingly in creating a sense of space magnitude and awe. Nothing accidental about that. I admire his instincts in this greatly.

Yes, I think Sunshine is a movie that warrants thought and conversation.

And I’ll watch it again, just to see the sun in action, and man’s feeble attempts to touch the face of his [practical, local] god.

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