"Sunshine" (2007) - Movie Review

I remember watching “Event Horizon” wherein a team of highly trained astronauts embark a journey to find a ship which got lost. The ship contains something called “gravity drive” which does the space-time fold. So when they reach the ship, it is lifeless but the gravity drive seems to operate. Strange thing happens and eventually the crew goes insane in various possible way of exploring the hallucinations generated by the ship. In “Sunshine”, there is the same highly technically trained astronauts go to re-ignite the Sun since it is dying threatening the extinction of life. So when “Sunshine” slowly unfolds itself I was hoping that they do not enter the same situation of “Event Horizon”. And yet it did.

It is true that out in the unknown territory of the universe there are million different things to play around minds of a person. Director Danny Boyle says that through this movie as “Event Horizon” did. May be there are lot other movies which I have not seen running on same grounds. The plot of course is tempting to combine the awe of science fiction with the horror genre into the aura of psychological terror of fiction. The problem comes when the actions of the insanity generated by the ambience goes unexplained. The reasoning is hidden and the option of open interpretation does not work for science fiction, or at least in these two movies. When some one is watching a movie about science, there is immediate attention of detailed elaboration of every action happening over the screen. Hence bringing some another third party puts enormous baggage. The usual one line explanations do not deliver the real substance the creators intend.

Still, “Sunshine” is good till the rendezvous happens with the space ship Icarus – I the predecessor of the current Icarus – II, the crew is traveling. Up till the moment things are tight and strangely engaging. It still gives the same kind of chills and thrills when the outer shield is damaged and couple of them has to go outside to repair it. Physicist Capa (Cicillian Murphy) and Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada) go out to do that job. And trust me; you definitely know who is going to die. The moment of operation is well taken though.

When a group of people are in a science mission or camp or in a happy environment, they are going to die. Please do not scold me for this spoiler, because it is not one. Similar kind of situation got handled well in the movie “Mind Hunters”. There too the individuals slowly die one by one but the star casts are all supporting in and off the screen. All the people bore the same status as stars. They were known for doing supporting roles. Hence there was constant guess and mystery involving on who will be next or who will be the killer. “Sunshine” need not have even gone to this scenario. The mere process to complete the mission of igniting the sun totally would have been enough to provide the satisfaction. Except for the last scene, they do not show earth at all which gives it a great plus of providing the claustrophobia. It is all within this crew who starts thinking on whom to kill to maintain the oxygen level. And indeed the means is not considered to attain the end of saving human kind. Sacrifices should be accidents and self made decision but not determined. These are the small scenes they should have capitalized well. There is no need for some external strange looking characters to kill these people. How many kiss good bye to their humanity and ready to do the unthinkable should have been the swinging pendulum out here.

I read in http://www.wikipedia.org/ that Writer Alex Garland said, “"What interested me was the idea that it could get to a point when the entire planet's survival rests on the shoulders of one man, and what that would do to his head," and yes it is striking. But it did not transfer properly in the screen.

The movie syncs with the audience on various occasions but the problem is that it went out of the orbit in the end (sorry couldn’t resist it!). The trailer has the Physicist Capa saying this, “So if you wake up one morning and it's a particularly beautiful day, you'll know we made it.” Nope the story did not and it’s all darkness in the end with no closure whatsoever.