Slow burn
Danny Boyle is one of the few directors who manages to transcend genre with every movie, refusing to become a niche filmmaker. His films have gone from film noir (Shallow Grave) to family comedy (Millions) to zombies (28 Days Later). And so it was inevitable, one assumes that he would eventually try his hand at the sci-fi genre, which he does with his newest film, Sunshine.
Though he has achieved critical and financial success with a number of films, he still seems to be woefully under-supported by the distribution companies, and his newest outing is no different. After a small smattering of television ads and a criminally misrepresentative trailer, 20th Century Fox seems to have switched all their concentration to making as much money as possible from The Simpsons Movie while letting Sunshine dissipate.
And it’s a shame because Boyle’s newest (written by frequent cohort Alex Garland) is an intelligent futuristic thriller that stands out in a summer season filled with big, dumb, bombastic kid fare. The marketing campaign suggests that Fox didn’t know how to handle this quiet movie because the storyline–one involving a group of astronauts and scientists attempting to jump-start a dying sun–comes off in trailers as Armageddon II, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack. But the two films couldn’t be more different, and Boyle’s film is a return to ’70s-era experimental sci-fi, a character study with a meditative build up of tension, rather than a reliance on pyrotechnics and CGI (though there are plenty of moments with both).
Borrowing from the best aspects of Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Abyss, Sunshine is the thinking person’s one-shot-at-saving-the-world-from-extinction scenario. Using a cast of little-knowns, aside from lead character Robert Capa (28 Days Later’s Cillian Murphy, who appears to be Boyle’s newest prodigy, now that Ewan McGregor is commanding a Star Wars salary), the ensemble cast of international actors do a deft job at making their characters evolve past the standard cliches, such as the inept and self-serving captain, the pretty female pilot, the brooding scientist, et al.
It’s difficult to write on plot development without giving away key points, but the crux of the story involves the ridiculously named Icarus II (which makes as much sense as naming your first child ‘Major Disappointment’) and their mission to reignite the dying star. Along the way, they receive a distress signal from their predecessor. Of course, as any sci-fi aficionado knows, you should probably ignore distress signals when out in deep space. But without kowtowing to sentimentality, the crew decides to intercept the ship based on the reasoning that two bombs are better than one, just in case they, you know, happen to miss the sun.
Fortunately, the film manages to make such an idiotic premise sound and rational, and during the docking the film has its most clever line, when the captain suggests they split up the search party. Another crew member protests because of the possibility that they ‘might be picked off one at a time by aliens.’
To an extent that’s almost a prophecy, but to say more would be telling. Suffice it to say that Sunshine works like a small film with a big budget, with an expertly filmed sense of subtext and dread, that does away with unnecessary things like a love interest, cheap scares and a pounding rock score. In a universe filled with bigger, louder, more expensive blockbusters, Sunshine provides a ray of light.
