restart the sun? say wha? [movies]

sunshine

the gods have gone away

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i have to admit the first time i saw 'sunshine' i didn't look too kindly upon it. if you've seen it, i'm sure you know exactly what i'm talking about, but if you haven't i'll try to explain without ruining anything for you (but honestly, if you're worried about reading spoilers you're surfin' the wrong site, so if i inadvertently go into great detail about the events in the film...uh, my bad, i guess). it was going along just fine and even starting to become really good, but at a certain point it kind of...derails, shall we say? all of a sudden it's like you're watching a completely different movie and it sorta cheapened the experience for me. i walked out feeling a little cheated...seemed like a cop-out. i couldn't logically understand why someone would tack on an ending that seemed to be a complete 180 from the rest of the film.

a few weeks later, however, i was drawn back to it mysteriously. i watched it again, noticed a bit more of the set up and the way danny boyle preps the audience for what's to come and once the crazy derailment point arrived it wasn't as bad as i remembered. this time i knew what was coming and that fact allowed me to accept it without being defensive because my movie-going experience had been interrupted. what i had originally tossed aside as a poorly thought-out, tacked on ending made a lot more sense to me. i mean, i got it the first time around - dude went crazy because he wanted to be the last man alive, alone with god, blah blah. but honestly, i thought it was just hooey - a crappy excuse to turn a hard sci-fi epic into a mainstream slasher picture. i'll admit, i was a little wrong. sunshine has more to say than that.

the film is not without it's faults. yes, it bares more than a passing resemblance to event horizon and perhaps owes a few credits to 2010 and alien as well, but it isn't fair to label 'sunshine' a rip-off or imitation. for one, it presents interesting enough concepts that it can hold its own against any of the aforementioned movies (and in certain cases surpass them). 'sunshine' is first and foremost about the allure, excitement and fear of the unknown and the human desire to elevate themselves to god-like status - two concepts that are often closely entangled. it encompasses this theme in a few different ways, most obviously the main story concept of humans using their grasp of science to restart a dying star. for humans, death and what (if anything) exists after it is perhaps the ultimate unknown. it is the one thing we are all racing towards and we're universally united by our obsession with it. some fear death, some accept it as an inevitability and some welcome it, but none can say they understand it's mysteries. there's something in our nature that turns a puzzle into an obsession when it cannot easily be mastered, something about our make-up drives us to conquer what is believed impossible...but what? everyone strives to be better than the person they're comparing themselves to for no other apparent reason than self-validation. in short, we each strive to be god-like in our own minds, whether it's by asserting our intelligence, strength, virility, wealth, dominance, courage or ambivalence over another person, place or thing.

dr. searle (cliff curtis) spends hours in the observation room, drawn to an image of the sun spinning slowly in the distance, growing ever larger and brighter as they draw closer. he's entranced by its beauty, power and danger. he wants desperately to understand it, to experience it as no one else has ever done before. capa (cillian murphy) is haunted by dreams of the sun's surface, but must master it in order to save everything he holds dear. the unknown for him is not death, as he seems to be at peace with the idea of "returning to the universe". for him, the unknown is the uncertainty of his own beliefs. as a physicist, he fears that his science, being purely theoretical, could in the end prove false. his actions are guided by this fear as he makes the call to reroute the mission to improve their odds of success.

the most interesting aspect of 'sunshine' is (strangely) the very thing that initially turned me off - the character of captain pinbacker. at first glance he appears to be nothing more than a blurry version of jason voorhees in space, but the more i watched the movie and the more i thought about it, the more the character evolved in my own mind. he's much more than a slasher. he is the embodiment of what 'sunshine' strives to illuminate about humanity and their quest to become gods in their own minds. like the others, pinbacker was obsessed with the unknown. for him, the unknown is the relationship between god and man. there are many ways to read into that, of course, it doesn't have to be god in the religious or spiritual sense - it can simply represent the powers of the universe from which we were all conceived. in his mind, in the presence of god he becomes one himself - the only man ever to exist alone in the universe with his creator. while fear of the unknown kept capa, searle and the others aboard the icarus 2's obsessions in check, pinbacker's experiences seemed to elevate him above the emotion. perhaps his survival itself left him feeling he had already mastered the unknown and as such he no longer feared it.

the aspect in which 'sunshine' falls flat and what ultimately holds it back from becoming a true masterpiece is the supporting cast. the problem is not with the actors, who all give strong work in their roles, but in the script. there simply isn't much for most of the cast to do but die and as such, we never really get to know them and are fairly unaffected when they do eventually get picked off. we're thrust into the action immediately and get to know very little about any of the crew members. we get tiny bits of background on some of the major characters like capa, but not much. by the time problems start arising and lives are placed in peril, we still don't really know who any of these people are or if they're even worth worrying about. you feel bad because people are dying or getting hurt, but you don't really care about them as individuals because they really aren't anything more than glorified red-shirts. strange because it seems like a film that tackles the kinds of topics 'sunshine' attempts would have benefited greatly from some more character progression.

'sunshine' is a film that comments on the implications of the human quest for knowledge and the consequences of taking that quest too far. it's a beautiful, but flawed film that takes multiple viewings to really appreciate fully, in my opinion. if you've seen it once, give it another chance, if you've never seen it, do so, but proceed cautiously...you might not be too impressed the first time around.