Sunshine

dir: Danny Boyle
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Decent, actual science fiction movies are few and far between, so when word started spreading that Danny Boyle, he of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later fame (and Life Less Ordinary and The Beach infamy) had made a serious sci fi flick, I was curious.

Most flicks use sci fi elements purely to propel a flick that’s mostly just an action/comedy/horror movie. It’s all fine and dandy to imagine what a society full of robots would be like in the future, but let’s not pretend the driving concept behind a flick where someone is fighting hundreds of robots makes it an existential exploration of the idea of artificial intelligence. Why would you bother with that when it’s far more fun to watch Will Smith get slapped around by a robot/alien/grandmother?

Sunshine has as its premise the inexplicable cooling of our solar system’s sun in about half a century’s time. In a desperate attempt to jump start the sun, and thus save all life on earth, an international team of scientists and astronauts sets off on a mission to the sun.

The plausibility of the scenario (getting all of the fissile material on earth, compressing it into superdense dark matter, flying to the sun and triggering a big bang type explosion which will restart the star’s processes) is not one I can adequately assess. I don’t know anywhere near enough about astronomy or physics, or astrophysics in order to be able to comment on its feasibility, or whether it would actually work. What I want in such a flick is at the very least the concerted appearance of plausibility, and characters taking actions that seem sensible given complicated circumstances.

On the most part, Sunshine is a really fine sci fi flick. For most of its length it puts these characters in difficult situations, mostly arising from the fact that regardless of how much technology advances in the next fifty years, such a mission in space would be constantly fraught with peril. So the majority of the problems are of what I would call an Apollo 13 nature: problems arising from the fragility with which human life is sustained in such an environment. Combine that with the added difficulties of trying to get things done so close to the intensity of the sun, and it feels like all these noble characters are always seconds from death.

The crew of the Icarus II is made up of professional scientists, mostly, who have the skills to pay the bills. And though this isn’t intended to be a suicide mission, they are at peace with the idea of having to sacrifice themselves (or each other) to get the job done. This mostly occurs in a refreshingly non-melodramatic manner. When circumstances change and render the viability of the mission in doubt, they calmly and rationally discuss how they can ensure the mission’s continuation. This often requires making choices that end people’s lives. That’s another strong aspect of the film: people are forced to make hard decisions, and they have to live with (or die from) the consequences.

For the Greater Good, presumably. The crew is made up of a whole bunch of people who fit a Hollywood – United Nations idea of what such a crew of people speaking English could or should look like: Japanese, Maori, Australian, Apple Pie American, Creepy British Guy, Malaysian, Chinese and the Son of Jane Fonda.

I’m not sure what the requirement is for a Son of Jane Fonda to be on the mission, but Troy Garity certainly is there as the second in command to Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada). Kaneda has the greatest difficulty expressing himself in English, but does a wonderful job playing a believable captain of such a crew. At one point when a tough choice is faced, the fact that this crew can’t operate solely as a chain of command hierarchy, or as a democracy is made explicit: depending on the problem facing them, the person most competent in that field of expertise has to make that decision.

It makes sense to me, but it’s something you rarely see articulated in such a flick.

Searle (Cliff Curtis) is the crew’s psychiatric officer whose task it is to ensure the crew doesn’t go batshit crazy with the space madness / cabin fever. He manages to do this without resorting to pedantic psychobabble or new age idiocies. His role is taken very seriously, by the flick and by himself, because such a crucial mission, which has necessitated a crew of diverse individuals to live and work in close proximity to each other for over a year, needs someone to stop the other folk from going crazy.

At the same time, he seems to be getting crazier himself. In an early scene we see him in an observation deck exposing himself to 2 per cent of the sun’s radiance in a manner that looks highly dangerous. He gets progressively more obsessed with the sun itself, looking for some kind of religious vision.

Capa (Cillian Murphy) is the team’s physicist, whose task it is to oversee the deployment of the device intended to reignite the sun. Since he’s played by creepy Irishman Murphy, he has a strange and distant aura to him, though I’m not sure how much of that is deliberate, and how much of it is just down to Murphy’s luminous, vacant eyes and his superpale skin.

Mace (Chris Evans) seems to be the token jock on board; the guy who got there on a football scholarship, but even he has his sensible moments of conflict with the other crew, whose bad choices he heartily expounds upon when necessary. Like everyone else on board (except Michelle Yeoh), he gets his time to shine.

Corazon (Yeoh) is the biologist keeping the crew alive with an oxygen producing garden, so naturally she’s treated like the Gaia-worshipping treehugger of the group. From Yeoh’s point of view (she of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragion and countless other Hong Kong action flicks), she’s probably happy to collect a paycheck without having to raise a sweat or break any bones. But they don’t give her that much to do.

There are more crew members who serve important roles in the flick (played by Rose Byrne and Benedict Wong), but there’s no point belabouring the point that each character plays their part well. Though the flick doesn’t get bogged down by giving elaborate backstories and character arcs to all of them, they don’t feel two dimensional even when we don’t know much about them. It helps that the vast majority of scenes between them do not transpire in a histrionic manner.

Effects-wise, there are some impressive, if not stunning visuals. It’s safe to say that a lot of money and design went into the effects, which definitely helps the flick out. The solar wind flowing from the sun, the sheer magnitude of the stream of energy radiating outwards is well depicted. I don’t think we get a chance to forget just how lethal this environment is. Other shots, like a dream sequence of a character falling into the sun, or their first visual of Mercury, or the titanic mirrored shield that protects the payload and the Icarus II, in fact pretty much every shot looks amazing. And when the shots involve the sun, it veers into the realms of the awe-inspiring.

It’s a very well put together film, and I have to say I was very impressed with the experience overall. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can safely say that where I was expecting something as dire as Event Horizon or Supernova, I got something that could stand the test of time like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris or Space Balls.

It retains a plausible feel even when situations and circumstances seem awfully tenuous, and it ratchets up the tension from the start and keeps the momentum up without recourse to too many plot devices that come out of nowhere. When something bad happens, it’s because the whole essence of space travel for us humans up till now is that a million random things can go wrong even when we get it right. Sustaining human life in space is about the most technologically difficult thing we can do, even on top of crazy stuff like fixing up the pilot light on a star. They manage to do all of this without insulting our intelligence, without clichés and without letting the story’s momentum falter. It’s a credit to everyone involved.

Except…

Except for an element that is introduced later on in the flick which seems unnecessary and incongruous. The situation seemed difficult enough, and desperate enough, and the stakes were sufficiently high enough before the introduction of a character who wants to see the mission fail because they have gone absolutely religiously mad in the face of the sun itself. Out of nowhere, this competent little flick starts turns into an Alien ‘homage’ with some of the crew being picked off by a crazy mad person. An annoying visual effect is used to represent the person, which doesn’t enhance the experience, just let me say. If that character and that element had been excised entirely, the flick would have been the better for it, in my unhumble opinion. Maybe it won’t grate on future viewings as much, but at the moment it’s a thorn in my eye.

It’s not a fatal flaw, but it is a flaw all the same. It holds the flick back from the true greatness it could have achieved. As it stands, it’s just a really good flick about some nerds trying to save all life on our planet as we know it. No pressure, guys.

7 times I have looked upon the face of God and seen someone looking back with their tongue poking out of 10

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“In the face of this, we are dust, nothing more. Unto this dust, we return. When He chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God.” – Sunshine.