Boyle's sci-fi Sunshine offers dark space epic
Subject to one of the poorest and nearly nonexistent marketing campaigns in recent memory, Sunshine, Danny Boyle's latest film, has floundered in U.S. theatres. No one could call Sunshine a low-budget independent film either; it is plainly a sci-fi space epic, one that the studios obviously did not know how to market. So while we are being subjected to, on the whole, sloppy filmmaking this summer, we lose this small gem amongst a staggering handful of blockbuster three-quels.
Sunshine's premise is extremely expansive: our sun is dying. And now a second ship, the Icarus II, and crew (supported by Cillian Murphy and Rose Byrne) have set off towards the sun to reignite it. How that is to happen remains a mystery throughout most of the film, with the crew and its resident physicist (Murphy) revealing only that they are to deliver a bomb that would achieve their goal.
As with many of Boyle's previous films, such as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, he excels in his depiction of human madness. Here, the crew's descent into chaos is amplified by the pressures of their immediate environment: space. And with this gothic setting allowing for no human error, the progression of the environment's physical and psychological toll on our characters is what makes this film fascinating.
Boyle's visual flare, present in all his films, shines through in this space environment, saturating the colors to their full and breathtaking extent. The greens of their onboard forest contrast sharply with the cold blue on the ship hull, each crisp in depicting isolated worlds aboard the ship. The intensity of the sunlight is unbelievable, soon rendering the other colors pallid in comparison. And indeed, it seems that light begins to conquer every other world, including crew, throughout the journey into the sun.
Boyle enjoys dealing not with spontaneous madness, as in say a nuthouse, but with a more terrifying situational madness, whether it be in response to bloodthirsty Infected or a plummet into the sun. This madness rises not out of the supposed uncontrollable insanity, but out of certain characters reactions to their outward environment closing in on them. This is shown in 28 Days Later..., with the army officers and in Sunshine with the last crew member of the Icarus I. Both act in response to this outward pressure, making their pointed goals far more terrifying than random thoughts in madness.
Space scares the hell out of me. And I can't see why it shouldn't frighten everyone else. In a film set in space, every time a crew member goes outside of the ship not tied to the hull, I hold my breath. I'm simply waiting for another 2001: something to come and knock this poor human out into nothingness, where space and time are indeterminable and therefore meaningless.
Boyle's complement to this nothingness is this everything, this raw force of the sun that permeates everything. We have a crew caught in between these horrifying extremes, helpless against the pull of them both. What Sunshine gives us is this new setting for mankind's breakdown, a source of life as a source of death.
