Mania Grade: B-
Maniac Grade: B
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- Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
- Rated: R
- Stars: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Benedict Wong, Mark Strong
- Writer: Alex Garland
- Director: Danny Boyle
- Distributor: Fox Searchlight
SUNSHINE
Philosophy, hard science and horror not coming together with less than total cohesion … By Rachel Reitsleff
July 20, 2007
Cillian Murphy in SUNSHINE (2007).
© Fox Searchlight
Sunshine is a cinematic case of the parts perhaps being more than the whole. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland (the team who brought us 28 Days Later and The Beach) have a lot of really good, deep, intriguing stuff on their minds, but in order to communicate it to us in a fashion that is narrative rather than conversational – that is, rather than sitting down and talking to us individually – they’ve wrapped their ideas in a story. The plot of Sunshine feels like the kind of science fiction that was popular in the ‘50s through the ‘70s – the movie at times feels like a super-smart throwback to the days when deep space was accepted as a metaphor rather than a backdrop.
In Sunshine, we’re somewhere way in the future and the Earth is freezing because the sun is dying. We’re with the crew of the second mission to the sun – the first mission disappeared en route – where the world’s last hope is that this team of scientists can plunge a nuclear device into the star’s core, where it will (everyone hopes) detonate and create a new sun. The crew is made up of a varied lot, some spiritual, some pragmatic, some easily scared. Then there’s the matter of what happened to that first ship …
Boyle and Garland have a lot on their minds, about responsibility, about science, about how what is most deadly can also be most beautiful and meaningful, but just when we start to be relaxing into the rhythms of their philosophical musings, as played out by the team of astronauts, the action gets amped up, eventually veering into horror territory. However, Boyle and Garland are still holding on to their darkly poetic take on the depths of space, mortality, destruction and creation, and while these themes often add resonance to fare with more commercial aspects, they don’t quite mesh here; by the end, we almost feel that we’re watching two separate films simultaneously, which don’t inform each other in the manner that appears intended.
Cillian Murphy, who earlier starred in 28 Days Later, has a soulful presence and a gaze that suggests an enormous amount going on behind the eyes that serves our protagonist Capa well and Hiroyuki Sanada is impressive in both his authority and compassion as the ship’s captain. Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Benedict Wong, Troy Garity and Chris Evans all display strong, engaging personalities as other crew members – individually, they’re fun to watch, it’s just that once the plot springs into its secondary action, a sense of disconnection ensues.
Tonally, Sunshine has some things in common with Steven Soderbergh’s English-language remake of Solaris. Solaris was likewise philosophical, but it ultimately had an easier task – it’s generally easier to dramatize human beings’ relationships to one another than to the sun and to space. It’s an ambitious dynamic, and it works sporadically, but there seems to be either one element too many or two few in the mix here by the finale.
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