Sunshine

"Sunshine"
Danny Boyle, 2007

The Sun is something of a paradox. It is essential for life as we know it, but it gives us skin cancer. It provides more than enough heat and energy, but without an atmosphere we're toast. Yes, this is a very random observation, but this strange paradox lies at the heart of "Sunshine," a science-fiction film by the director Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting"). Decades into the future, the Sun has run out of energy, and Earth's leaders have sent out a spaceship, called the Icarus II, with a device that can, in theory, reignite the Sun. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the small team of astronauts responsible for maintaining the ship is in for a rough ride. The ship is called the Icarus II for a reason; seven years prior, the first ship with a similar device and a very similar name - Icarus I - had gone missing. Besides, this is a science-fiction film, and where's the fun if not for many things going wrong?

And indeed, they do. The astronauts discover the Icarus I, and by deciding to rendezvous with it, they change their course; a slight miscalculation by one remarkably incompetent astronaut throws the ship's huge heat shield's alignment off, and chaos ensues. "Sunshine" has some very pretty visuals, particularly one in which crew members view the Sun from the safety of a heavily-polarized observation room. The astronauts can hardly take their eyes off the mesmerizing sight, and we can only imagine how, during their lifetimes on Earth, they have hardly been able to see the ever-diminishing Sun, something that we take for granted. But these are paper-thin characters, so when the astronauts are invariably killed off, we hardly give a damn. Only our protagonist, a physician who is the only person who can operate the device, leaves much of an impact; this is mostly due to Cillian Murphy's piercing, unsettling blue eyes, and to his above-average performance.

Up to this point, "Sunshine" is silly, but reasonably entertaining fare, but when the Icarus II docks with its predecessor, things go downhill. The surviving crew members encounter the "Sun Man," for lack of a better description, the captain of the first Icarus who had an epiphany and abandoned the mission. This epiphany is sketchy, something about realizing that humans are dust and that we should just accept our fate. I don't have a problem with the concept, despite the fact that it's hardly fleshed out; the Sun Man is essentially the Sun-incarnate, a dangerous entity that seems intent on foiling the astronauts' mission, despite their efforts to, ironically, save the Sun.

What I do have a problem with is the technique involved with the last third of the film. The Sun Man has an interesting appearance, with bubbling, glowing skin that resembles the surface of the Sun, but we can hardly see him because of Boyle's strange camerawork and editing. He employs lots of extreme closeups, blurred shots that resemble what it would probably look like if we looked at the Sun for too long, and very quick cuts, which, rather than giving the Sun Man an aura of danger and mystery, produce a loud and busy mess with poorly-realized action sequences. "Sunshine" ends up being a disappointment, which is unfortunate given the film's potentially interesting idea of the Sun as both a source of life and of destruction.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 7/28/08, on Blu-ray Disc
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