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talktoolooseI don't know when the North American release date for the Sunshine DVD is, but our video store got in an Asian release and we watched it Friday night.
This is, hands down, the best science fiction movie of the last 20 years, unless I've forgotten something. No, not Space Truckers.
The movie takes place in the not-too-distant future. The sun has suddenly decided to ramp down and the Earth is cooling towards extinction. A last-hope mission is sent off in a portentously named ship, the Icarus, with a big nuclear device to restart the star.
Not only was the movie beautiful and superbly acted, but it worked on "real" and metaphoric levels with equal vigour and never lost track of its themes. What especially excited me was the way that the journey from the Earth to the Sun became a de facto journey into abstraction. The crew left Earth amid hoopla, carrying the hopes of billions on their (uniformly attractive) shoulders but soon entered a realm of isolation and individual doubt which mirrored the physical space they were travelling through.
The movie starts as they enter the zone where solar interference will cut them off from communication with home. That is the first level of isolation in the movie. The process will continue as the number of the crew dwindles and as symbolic and metaphoric concerns take on a larger and larger part of their world.
The creators of the movie recognize that this movement into metaphor is inevitable. As the sun looms closer and closer, protean and deadly, the crew can't help but see divinity and fate in its fires.
Furthermore, an early visualization in the movie lets us know that eventually the A.I. that runs the ship will be useless as relativistic forces close to the sun make known physics less and less applicable. In the end, we are signalled, it will be up to human will, human intuition, the realm of the soul whether mankind survives or not.
In fact, the greatest danger the mission faces is in the form of a human who has become twisted under the philosophical/religious/metaphoric pressures of the situation.
The fact that Danny Boyle and company can make a film which works this way and stays coherent is nothing short of remarkable.
Would I have done things differently in the last act? Probably, but I'm not sure anyone could have done it better.
This is, hands down, the best science fiction movie of the last 20 years, unless I've forgotten something. No, not Space Truckers.
The movie takes place in the not-too-distant future. The sun has suddenly decided to ramp down and the Earth is cooling towards extinction. A last-hope mission is sent off in a portentously named ship, the Icarus, with a big nuclear device to restart the star.
Not only was the movie beautiful and superbly acted, but it worked on "real" and metaphoric levels with equal vigour and never lost track of its themes. What especially excited me was the way that the journey from the Earth to the Sun became a de facto journey into abstraction. The crew left Earth amid hoopla, carrying the hopes of billions on their (uniformly attractive) shoulders but soon entered a realm of isolation and individual doubt which mirrored the physical space they were travelling through.
The movie starts as they enter the zone where solar interference will cut them off from communication with home. That is the first level of isolation in the movie. The process will continue as the number of the crew dwindles and as symbolic and metaphoric concerns take on a larger and larger part of their world.
The creators of the movie recognize that this movement into metaphor is inevitable. As the sun looms closer and closer, protean and deadly, the crew can't help but see divinity and fate in its fires.
Furthermore, an early visualization in the movie lets us know that eventually the A.I. that runs the ship will be useless as relativistic forces close to the sun make known physics less and less applicable. In the end, we are signalled, it will be up to human will, human intuition, the realm of the soul whether mankind survives or not.
In fact, the greatest danger the mission faces is in the form of a human who has become twisted under the philosophical/religious/metaphoric pressures of the situation.
The fact that Danny Boyle and company can make a film which works this way and stays coherent is nothing short of remarkable.
Would I have done things differently in the last act? Probably, but I'm not sure anyone could have done it better.
