I had such high hopes for this movie, knowing that Boyle took the producing role on 28 Weeks Later, so he could direct it. I appreciate the style and plot, but this movie has serious problems. The movie starts out promisingly. A small group of "international" cosmonauts on a desperate mission to save the world. What struck me, and what makes this movie so interesting is that Boyle—through great cinematography by Alwin Kulcher, and excellent repeat performances by Mark Tildesley in production design, and John Murphy in music—manages to produce an Alien-like sense of isolation and paranoia early on in the movie. The refreshing difference between Alien and Sunshine is that instead of a b-movie template in style and emotional content, Boyle uses a harder sci fi sensibility. Almost as an aside this imparts a mild humanist utopian aura over the whole ordeal (think of Corazon's garden, Silent Runnings anyone?). The movie draws upon much more influences than his say, Trainspotting. But what I find most encouraging about Sunshine is that it espouses a seriousness and authenticity in science fiction—a dignity that the genre so frequently has been denied in the past. This verite science fiction does not jubilate in fantasy. It is attached to it's advances science—dolefully at times, as indeed we see here in Sunshine.
It seems funny then, that Sunshine's two biggest influences are pulpy influences of other 'restart the sun' movies like Solar Crisis, and another I can't remember the name of. But that's okay, because for most of the movie, the plot is secondary. Sure it drives the character's actions, but it's really more like a MacGuffin. Let me explain it another way, the way character's feel about each other is set before the movie begins. The events that conspire and the action's they illicit are just bringing about interpersonal dynamics that are already there.
It appears that Cillian Murphy and newcomer Rose Byrne, are the heir's apparent in Boyle's cabal of actors, and that's fine by me. Murphy's performances in 28 Days Later clearly shows merit, and he doesn't let down here. He's quiet, and never (not even here) overplays a scene. Byrne too, in 28 Weeks Later, showed incredible promise. She gives another good performance here, where she plays a wanton woman malaised by her super-ego. The eventual love story plays out meteredly from begining to end—despite the eventual plot failures.
So it would seem that Sunshine is a prime example of what is good in science fiction. It has a progressive sense of narrative integrity, it's beautiful, it sounds nice, the performances are good, and it doesn't turn a blind eye to it's historical roots. An heir to one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, Alien. What then could hold Sunshine back from greatness? Well, I don't mind telling you: Plot.
What begins with the promise of a 2001-esque ability to think—which happens in the genre of science fiction film (as indeed everywhere else) rarely—eventually succumbs to the same pitfalls that it tries to escape. About half way through the movie—on an extra-vehecular assignment—the characters encounter a crazed, crippled, religous-zealotry spewing, ex-captian, and inadvertently bring him back aboard their ship. What ensues is mild paranoia and frights, which eventually disappear. The characters get closer to the sun and the movie's monster goes back underground. It seems (for a moment) as though the movie might go back and fulfill it's initial promise. But as the movie progresses, he returns and disappoints. His prominence increases until the—near perfectly orchestrated, aurally—climax.
Don't get me wrong. I do not begrudge Boyle the right to be frightening, suspenseful, or religious. Indeed he was all of these things and more in previous movies, and well at that. What I do begrudge him is the right to do it sloppily. Characterization of the monster (and that's what it was) was tenuous at best. His dialogue reads as deluded pabulum, and quickly dissolves into white noise. The cinematography suffers as action sequences are shot from expressionist angles. The monster is often sublimated by a visual distortion of the film—which, while an interesting effect in it's own right, and it may well be perfect in another movie—that completely hides the wonderful production design, and creates—along with the angles—a complete disjunct in the cinematography's continuity. The subtle exploration of character interaction is increasingly displaced by plot until the end.
It's a hard movie to rate because it is so perfect, and ultimately so flawed. The reason I enjoy it, even though it has so many problems, is partially what a friend said to me about it. She said something like: "Why is it that, there always has to be a dragon?" And she's right. The way our world works, (in science fiction, Joseph Campbell is partially to blame) "action" movie (as opposed to drama) need to have a dragon. Can you fault a thing for being itself. It's western popular cinema, love it or hate it. And in Sunshine, there's so much to love. Most science fiction films can't hope to be as sober and gentle with their subject matter. Is it a flawwed movie? Yes, Is some of it downright bad? Yes. But it does have a glimpse of what science fiction could be, and hopefully will be in the future.
