Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007)

[Commander Shears]

It's a Bob Dylan line, FYI.

Alien - 25%
Event Horizon - 20%
2001 - 20%
Agatha Christie - 15%
Fire - 10%
Brilliant Deaths - 10%

I find this very disconcerting. Besides, how can a film possibly be equal parts 2001 and Event Horizon? One cannot be 20% PWS Anderson any more than one can be 20% murderer or 20% evil. I suppose it is just 40% Solaris.

[kinjitsu]

From The Guardian:

2007: a scorching new space odyssey

Danny Boyle interview at BFI Southbank

[Antoine Doinel]

Extended Trailer.

Wow. I'm speechless. This looks amazing.

[malcolm1980]

This already had it's run here.

It's pretty good. Not quite as good as 28 Days Later... but it's a solid effort by everyone involved. I think the third act will divide people.

[tryavna]

I think the third act will divide people.

That's pretty much true of every Danny Boyle movie.

Based on that trailer, the title now seems like an especially brilliant stroke.

[DDillaman]

It's a Bob Dylan line, FYI.

Alien - 25%
Event Horizon - 20%
2001 - 20%
Agatha Christie - 15%
Fire - 10%
Brilliant Deaths - 10%

I find this very disconcerting. Besides, how can a film possibly be equal parts 2001 and Event Horizon?

Oh, you just wait.

SUNSHINE has come and gone in NZ, and it's equally remarkable how jawdropping it is for a while and how deeply shitty it gets in the third act. For a while, I was seriously thinking it was one of the best sci-fi movies ever. Then it spat in my face.

[margot]

That extended trailer is ridiculous, it gives away so many plot-points and such I really wish I hadn't watched it. I'm not too excited about this but it does look really really interesting and I like Danny Boyle so I'll go see it. For some reason I keep thinking it's a Aronofsky film.

You know it's gonna bomb though.

[patrick]

That extended trailer is ridiculous, it gives away so many plot-points and such I really wish I hadn't watched it.

Especially since (according to the Slant review) Fox is specifically asking critics to not reveal any secrets about the movie lest it be spoiled.

[Barmy]

Does anyone actually endorse the third act?

Overall this was good. The science aspect is bologna but presented in a believable way. The effects are outstanding. I do think that the notion that these lunkheads were the best that could be found to save humanity is laughable and scary.

The Kubrick % is more like 40%, explosive bolts and all.

The third act could easily have been dialed down while retaining the same plot, but it went all silly and OTT.

I generally avoid reading reviews before I see a film and this one in particular benefits from going in blind.

[colinr0380]

The latest episode of The Treatment features an interview with Danny Boyle.

[margot]

I'm actually glad I watched that extended trailer and knew about the 5th crew member cause I think if I hadn't known about that I wouldn't flipped out over the 3rd act, but expecting it made me appreciate it much more.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I saw it a couple days ago. I agree on the first two acts, they seemed like they were building up to something brilliant, but the third act, while not the pile of crap most people are calling it, was pretty bad. I was talking to someone about it and we both had the same idea about how the end should have gone:

Spoiler

Instead of him going through the spaceship to man the bomb, we actually both forgot that he had to do that and figured he wanted to ride the bomb down to the sun like in his dreams, which, being not only poetic and whatnot, would have been a far better ending than the "WALL OF FIRE" bit. It also would have provided for some really interesting visuals and music.

Also, I really loved the shots of the rotating pieces after they hit the sunlight. There was something really creepy about the mix of visuals, soundtrack, and what you knew was going on. Probably one of the best single parts of the movie.

[ranaing83]

Saw this a couple of days ago, and I must agree that the third act turn is really unexpected, which is not to say that it is executed poorly, but rather, it feels so out of place. If Boyle had stuck with the contemplative, realistic feel of the film's first 2/3rds, I'd have no problem calling this the best film of the year and one of the best films of this type ever. As it stands, a large part of act 3 feels like a completely different film. I wish Boyle had shot two separate films, Sunshine and another film that was completely dedicated to the sensibility of the "third act turn." But there is still much to recommend. Sunshine contains some of the most beautiful, touching visuals of any film I have ever seen. There is a haunting, beautiful poetry to the images in this film that is hard to ignore.

[Faux Hulot]

Am I the only one who's noticed that this seemed to be at least a partial remake of John Carpenter's Dark Star? I had that nagging impression almost from the beginning, but

Spoiler

having a character named Pinbacker

was such an obvious tip of the hat that had I been drinking anything at the moment, it probably would have shot out of my nose.

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this tonight and I have to say I absolutely loved it, third act and all. I think anyone going in hoping to expect a scientifically sound film is bound to come out disappointed. But I am the only one who felt something ominous in the first and second acts? While the third act certainly gets very interesting to say the least, I think Boyle's use of music and certain shots, particularly on faces and the way certain lines are phrased, more than foreshadow what happens.

I was literally on the edge of my seat in the theater for the last half hour of the film. I also thought Cillian Murphy was extraordinary. He probably only has about fifteen lines in the entire film, but he is such an amazing presence.

[lord_clyde]

I was literally on the edge of my seat in the theater for the last half hour of the film. I also thought Cillian Murphy was extraordinary. He probably only has about fifteen lines in the entire film, but he is such an amazing presence.

Very true, I didn't even realize this.

[eez28]

Anyone find any reviews out on the R2/3 dvd?

[colinr0380]

I haven't sat down with the film yet, but these are the extras on the UK disc:

5.1 English, 5.1 English Audio Description tracks
2 commentaries - 1: Danny Boyle; 2: Dr Brian Cox of The University of Manchester
Alternate ending with optional director commentary
Deleted scenes
Web production diaries
Short films
Teaser and theatrical trailer

DVD Basen has collected the reviews so far from DVD Times, The Region 2 Project and dvdtherapy

EDIT: Strangely although the DVD Times review says that the previews for other Fox DVDs are forced on their copy they are not on my DVD, which loads straight to the main menu. There is a 'Coming Soon' menu selection that plays the trailers the DVD Times review talks about, but thankfully you don't have to play through them if you want to get straight to the film.

[eez28]

Thanks for the links

[colinr0380]

Major spoilers

This has become my favourite film of the year. I can understand some of the criticism about having seen much of the plot before in other films with the only real difference being that the film is about the Sun rather than Jupiter or Neptune (in Event Horizon's case), but the whole of Sunshine was handled so well - it feels like the perfect love letter to the science-fiction film as, for me at least, it actually improves on a couple of sequences that seem familiar from other films and is handled in such a way that it doesn't start me thinking that it is arrogantly trying to supercede earlier sci-fi films but instead produces a feeling of excitement and of wanting to go back and watch all the earlier classics again.

It is all speculation on my part about whether some of the references were intentional or not but the film had me thinking about the history of sci-fi films while watching in a way I don't think I ever have before. Yet the story itself felt like an original piece of work made from familiar elements (Gus Van Sant: this is the way to pay homage to a genre!)

For example an enormous reference, especially in the ending message and brighter, rather than second, sun, is 2010. Yet Sunshine commendably stays away from any use of aliens whether good or evil, so the message comes from the last crew member. They've kept the essence of the scene but updated it from the earlier film (2010 is a rather dated film now with the Cold War plotting, but it is still well worth watching for the sequence of John Lithgow's spacewalk to the spinning Discovery). Not only that, but the scene has a hint of Ripley's last messages from the Alien films.

It seems as if early on the film is constantly taking the audience's expectations and twisting against them. For example I got the "uh-oh" feeling early on when Searle was playing with the shields to feel the force of the sun (and also when he asks the captain what he sees as he is about to die). It felt as if he was being set up to be the 'crazy one' (with the added ironic touch of being the ship psychiatrist!), but he ended up as a very noble character. The heat blisters on his face, rather being the signs of him becoming a monster seem to instead be used as both the first suggestion that the crew might be prone to mistakes of judgement which could be fatal in such a hostile environment as well as a preparation for the arrival of the horrendously burned Pinback - the obsessed sun-worshipper (in both senses of the word!) that I had thought Searle might become.

Then there is the 'ten little Indians' scene of having to get the crew members down to four. Perhaps someone could help me with the name of a film I saw over a decade ago: that film had a group of people stranded in a spaceship with only enough oxygen to save two, and involved them having to play games to decide which people died and which survived. I can't remember the name of the film at all, but the plot has stayed in my mind for all this time - I know it isn't the film Lifepod, which is a reworking of Lifeboat in space. That scene between just Corazon, Cassie and Mace immediately brings up the assumption that they might be involved in a pact to remove the other members of the crew, an assumption that is completely overturned once we understand each of their characters better. It isn't an emotional scene as it first appears but a logical, if brutal, one (Perhaps the aspect I most like about this film is that the fight scenes are played for laughs. The anger Mace feels about not being able to send his message home is understandable and strangely the early argument gives him a human scene before he has to make the difficult, unemotional decisions later on. Not just played for laughs, but played as absurd and useless in that environment - there is no room for the usual character conflicts. Similar to how Boyle says in his commentary that there isn't really room for love scenes either - they expend energy in an environment where energy usage is at a premium).

I've heard some criticism of the 'big mistake' by Trey that causes all the problems - I have no problem at all about this, and in a way it is another sign of the 'alpha, A grade, best of the best' scientists being all too human. The mistake is a plot contrivance, yet it improves on many other contrivances I've seen in films - it reminds me of making absolutely sure you've put everything down you need on your shopping list then when you get to the shop you realise you've forgotten to bring your wallet! You've focused so much on the thing you mustn't forget that the absolute simplest thing slips your mind, and so it is with Trey forgetting to align the shield before moving the ship.

One of my favourite scenes is where Cassie refuses to give her vote to killing Trey. The entire scene is played beautifully by Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Cillian Murphy and Rose Byrne, and I felt grateful (as I did a lot of times watching the film) that Cassie's response, understanding that Trey was to die but refusing to put her name to the vote, was not handled in a histrionic manner. Of course one life cannot be weighed against all those that need to be saved on the Earth (Capa's response), but Cassie's response adds the human touch in a delicate way: she understands what has to be done but leaving the vote as three 'for' and one 'abstention' at least gives Trey the dignity of not having a unanimous decision to give him the boot (as well as distancing herself from the action they are contemplating of course!). She also humanises the other characters again by asking Mace to not let Trey suffer unnecessarily, so that they have to contemplate the consequences of their actions, even if it is an inevitable decision.

The third act: I agree with Antoine Doinel, I have no trouble with it at all. It all seems logical, even as time and space are being compressed and torn apart. The comparisons to Event Horizon seem well made. Despite Pinbacker having a name from Dark Star he seems to be channelling Sam Neill from that film, only ranting about Heaven rather than Hell (is there much of a difference?), and eventually it does fall to the two polar opposite characters, as it fell to Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne in Event Horizon, to travel to the heart of the mystery, something Capa would never have done if the mission had gone as planned. (Yet again this is a familiar moment, but while the essence is the same the meaning of the scene is changed between the two films to a more 'realist' approach in Sunshine, or at least as realist as a space set action film could get! The relationships are also reversed, much like the Fox Searchlight title was at the beginning of the film. Sunshine has the scientist fulfil his mission, overcoming the deeply non-scientific beliefs of Icarus I's captain while Event Horizon had the scientist become an emissary of Hell and the captain had to save what was left of his crew through his sacrifice. Whether intentional or not, I feel the connection between these two films and they both feel deepened by the comparison).

I like the way that Capa gets the supreme moment of seeing what I assume to have been his life's work in action (wouldn't that be a great dream of many scientists? to not just see the result of their work but the actual event from close up?), and then we have the final scene of Capa's sister on Earth seeing the result - the scientific climax and then the human one, reminding us again of the wider goal all that work was done for.

The whole film is that attempt at balancing the human needs and emotions against the scientific ones of at least fulfilling the mission successfully. That harmony is beautifully achieved at the end, even if we don't know whether this was a stop-gap solution or a complete success.

The film itself, like all science-fiction, is similarly trying to find that balance, and it feels like it makes perfect sense that it boils down to Capa, Cassie and Pinbacker. The scientist and the preacher, with Cassie as the earlier sequence talking about Trey showed, perfectly placed between as someone in touch with both aspects. (Perhaps a nod to the final scene of Metropolis, although that might be stretching things too far! I don't remember Maria jumping onto Joh Frederson while his son rips part of his arm off in an attempt to mediate!) It is only a brief sequence of the three of them on the bomb but the way it has boiled down to the archetypal characters and the barren setting feels beautifully done, as Cassie's need to complete the mission takes precedence.

By far my favourite science-fiction film of the decade, and probably my favourite Danny Boyle film since Trainspotting. Although I still think Shallow Grave and Trainspotting are Danny Boyle's best films in a strange way I think I love this film and its characters more - I could certainly see myself revisiting this film much more than any of his other films so far.

I'm glad my fears about a lot of people being 'squarked' in my earlier post didn't come true! Also my fears about long explanatory scenes were unfounded - the one scene between Capa and Cassie explaining the bomb is beautifully done with more emphasis on the wonder of the way it works and the fear of dying than the science itself.

There are some fantastic death scenes. The captain's scene was particularly impressive, but also Searle finally fulfilling his dream of seeing the sun and Harvey's amazing death in space - opening his eyes to be confronted with a final, distorted image of himself in the mirrors of the ship as he freezes, smashing apart and then burning up in the full force of the sun.

The whole cast were pitch perfect and should be extremely proud of their work in the film - my biggest apology has to go to 'the guy from the Fantastic Four film' as I flippantly called Chris Evans in an earlier post. He was extremely impressive in what could have been a very unlikeable role - the character of Mace was never pointlessly antagonistic or argumentative for the purpose of just creating tension between characters. Evans played the role perfectly as someone who expected high standards from everybody, passing the biggest test of whether he would treat himself the same way and eventually consider himself as expendable as the others.

Two very interesting things learnt from Danny Boyle's commentary: Wong Kar-Wai suggested Hiroyuki Sanada for the role of the captain, Boyle was impressed by his work in Twilight Samurai.

The lady playing Capa's sister in the final scene is singled out for praise by Boyle, who mentions she is also a director and was the person who suggested Cillian Murphy for the part in 28 Days Later...

Perhaps the final message of the film is that if you are ever on a space mission, make damn sure you are the only person who knows how to work the most important piece of equipment. Otherwise you might be the first person to be found expendable!

[Antoine Doinel]

Hey collin0380, great analysis of the film. You really hit on many of the things that I really loved about this film, particularly the strong performances by the entire cast. I too thought Chris Evans was great, giving much more depth to a role that could've been a total write off.

One other aspect of the film I liked was the slow, unspoken addiction of Searle to the sun, and how by the end of the film his face became more blistered and scaled from repeated, self-exposure.

Garland's script is wonderful in that it is both tight knit and yet remarkably open. The characters evolve in unique ways and this is certainly a film I'm looking forward to seeing this again.

[colinr0380]

Thanks Antoine! The only problem I felt with the film was that there was very little time to explore before the crises began, so I found it a little difficult to figure out the geography of the ship on my first viewing. Perhaps having a silent sequence where the camera goes off exploring the place would be too reminiscent of the opening of Alien though!

Perhaps also the transit of Mercury sequence could have run a little longer, maybe until the planet disappeared from view - as it stands in the film we cut away while the spectacle is still occuring. To use an analogy it is the psychological difference between waving goodbye to someone driving away and immediately turning away and walking back inside your house or waving goodbye and watching until the other person's vehicle has driven out of sight before going inside. I don't know if that makes sense to others but there is a certain contemplation that standing and watching the entire event affords that cutting away while it is still happening seems to diminish somehow.

However it is a nice feeling to be left wishing the film were a few minutes longer!

EDIT on 7th September: I made a mistake in my earlier post: Paloma Baeza, the lady playing Capa's sister, is a director in her own right as well as an actress.

I've just listened to the scientific commentary and if ever someone needed proof of the value of commentary tracks, this one proves it! It is a very nice discussion of both the science and themes, from reiterating the theory from chaddoli's post about the Q balls and the way they were used to create the crisis with the sun to talking about survival in space without a suit (that you wouldn't immediately explode in a vacuum because the atmospheric pressure is not that different - death would come through suffocation. Also that Harvey wouldn't have frozen so quickly). He also pointed out some of the mistakes (I particularly like his comment about how Michelle Yeoh's character shouldn't have technically said the characters would be exposed to minus 273 degrees (i.e. absolute zero) in the vacuum of space because the universe is three degrees above that point due to cosmic radiation. So she should have said they would be exposed to minus 270 degrees! But then he qualifies it by saying that Corazon is a Biologist, so what would she know!)

I'm also glad that Dr Cox prefers to think of Trey having decided to take his own life rather than having been killed by Pinbacker (which was Danny Boyle's suggestion in his commentary) - it gives Trey a sacrificial moment, rather than a victim's death, and I agree with Dr Cox that it seems absurd to think Pinbacker would go to the trouble of staging a suicide (it also makes the moment where Pinbacker accidentally grabs Trey's corpse, giving Cassie a momentary advantage, work better than it would if Pinbacker has already been aware of Trey's presence. It also gives Trey a final moment to make up for his past mistake by helping out after his death!)

Hopefully both commentaries will be on the region 1 disc as well, and I would urge even those who didn't like the last section of the film to try them, especially the scientific one - it was a very enjoyable listen.

Something else I didn't mention in my last post - the visuals. Not just the jaw dropping CG, but the beautiful use of faces distorted in and through glass (Harvey's death is a great example, but also the last shot of the sequence where Cassie talks with Capa inside the bomb early in the film), and the way that the film seems to be melting and dissolving the images into abstraction, especially once Pinbacker arrives. There are also great uses of lens flares throughout, beautiful in themselves but also constantly keeping us aware of the presence of light and the way we are perceiving it.

[jbeall]

I just watched the dvd yesterday (and boy, oh boy do I regret not seeing this on the big screen!), and while my post won't have nearly the depth of those immediately preceding, here's my two cents:

Beautifully, just beautifully shot and good acting performances all around. The Pinbacker storyline was too derivative for me (esp. after 2001, 2010 and Solaris) and really didn't add anything to the overall mystery of the cosmos that was already present in the first 2/3s of the movie. Still, up to that point every single scene was gripping, and I felt psychologically drained every single time something else happened.

I really felt the characters were all very well fleshed-out, but the film did a great job of giving you that information while still staying true to the narrative. I watched the deleted scenes, all of which were exposition, and felt that Sunshine had a more more economical narrative by cutting those scenes.

[Marcel Gioberti]

It's hard to imagine how Danny Boyle could make this film worse to be honest. It starts off as a badly written, poorly acted, stale, antiseptic (but without purpose) Gap commercial in space. Then, with even worse writing, we discover that this crew of the world's biggest space geniuses, the average age being 28, forgets to calculate the most basic calculations. "Oops, I forgot to push the button to make us not die!" Oh, and their computer didn't seem to catch the blunder, either.

Then, just when I thought it could get no worse, it riffs on Jacob's Ladder and Event Horizon before somersaulting into one of the stupidest endings imaginable. The music sounded like Moby's b-sides and since Moby's a-sides are nauseatingly cheesy, you can be sure this soundtrack was awful.

Of course, it had its share of -isms, too, namely sexism with a smattering of generic Hollywood white supremacy. What an utter crock of embarrassing shit.

[John Cope]

I'll agree with the general consensus here that this was, overall, an excellent film and certainly one of the better attempts at sci-fi in the last decade or so. Still, having said that, I'd have to also agree with Marcel that the script was bad or at least weak. What compensates for this is everything else. Boyle definitely needs to maintain a working relationship with Alwin Kuchler (who also has a history of excellence shooting Lynne Ramsay's movies) and editor Chris Gill. These guys are absolutely invaluable. Between their contribution, the music (which I loved) and first rate performances from all involved, Boyle is able to elevate what might otherwise have been strictly routine material. He and his collaborators re-energize and invigorate tired, shopworn cliches and this is always exciting to me as it indicates how much life and truth exist in what is generally so familiar that it is disregarded.

Boyle manages to shift smoothly away from the more subdued, naturalistic mode of the film's first half and into a place of gradual psychotic splintering that feels like the right, even most logical place to go. What's best about it is the way the controlled, considered aesthetic acts as a reproach or correction to the worst elements of Garland's script. It's hard for me to imagine that on paper much of this read as vital, though the moral conflicts of the first hour are surely sufficiently well drawn, sufficiently at least to provide room for illustration and expansion.

Part of the reason that the last act seems to fall apart for many has to do with the fact that in his effort to create a narrative of heroic atheism (and that was his stated intention) Garland indulges in the most broad, unexamined caricature to represent the horrors of "irrationalism". Due to this didactic motive, the end of the film then feels flat and at odds with its own implicit inner purpose. Pinbacker is employed to be an exemplification of Garland's own worst prejudices regarding notions of belief and the erection of this character as a straw man opponent to Capa's admirable humanism comes off as a forced and prosaic element of a film which had otherwise been defined more by its subtlety and precision.

Boyle salvages Garland's unnecessary drive into polemicism by emphasizing the quality of the aesthetic shift at this point in the film and making it feel representative of some kind of actual interior development. Also, to his credit, Boyle even manages to refine the status of the Pinbacker character by indicating how his response, extreme though it may be, is to a degree justifiable. Pinbacker is placed on the furthest edge of a continuum with Searle in close proximity. Cassie exists at the center, precariously balancing the need for human empathy with the difficulty of tough decision making. An argument could certainly be made that this was all implicit in Garland's script but I get the impression that these carefully attuned modulations of character are ultimately tangential to his real agenda which is to place the most unreasonable character in direct opposition to the most reasonable one (wrongly assumed to be Capa, when that person would actually be Mace, at least if "reason" is being defined as pure pragmatism). This kind of either-or, binary reductionism does neither the film nor its larger ambition any favors.

Boyle and his crew effect the emphases that ultimately balances out the whole scenario and allows us to see more clearly and with less prejudice what Garland presumably wanted to begin with. The last half hour shifts into a series of almost surreal abstractions and, by allowing Capa a slow build to a moment of ecstatic fulfillment, rejects the myopic notion that human reason can or should ever be stripped of its ecstatic potentiality or (capa)city for expansive vision.