Sunshine

Don't know how many claustrophobic spaceship films I've seen but there's been a bunch. Possibly 12. And Danny Boyle's new feature Sunshine fits somewhere in the middle. Aboard the Icarus II, a team of astronauts have a mission to fire a payload deep into the heart of the sun. They hope this payload will generate an explosion that will reignite its dying embers, thereby saving planet Earth. During their voyage, they encounter a distress beacon from their lost predecessor, the Icarus I, and decide to investigate. Within this investigation, lies both their personal doom and their eternal salvation.

Alex Garland's script showcases some of the typical sci-fi-thriller tropes. The tight quarters cause egos to erupt, leading to fighting amongst the crew. An evil force is encountered bent on destroying their mission. Love-play is absent as the crew have more serious matters to take care of, and recreation can be found in a room which manufactures whatever its inhabitant desires. Of these traits, I was somewhat disappointed by the introduction of the evil force. The villain certainly provides the heroes with plenty of opportunity to be heroic but couldn't these traits still be effectively displayed without the presence of a bloodthirsty lunatic?

Probably not, but it would be nice to see if the filmmakers could pull it off without being either excessively mundane or trivially over-the-top. I suppose I'm searching for another 2001 but even it had its own version of a monster.

Okay, perhaps you need monsters in science fiction thrillers of one kind or another, but I still don't like the demon that inhabits Sunshine. Nonetheless, it certainly doesn't take away from the script's interesting characteristics. The crew has recourse to a special room that offers them an extremely close up encounter with the rays of the sun, and, even though none of them seem that tanned, the image can represent research or the pursuit of knowledge. The maximum percentage of brightness that a viewer can be exposed to is somewhere around 3.1%, a statistic that represents knowledge's pursuit insofar as no matter how much we learn, there are always billions of other things we'll never know, each producing their own life breathing intensity. One death scene stands out as well, where the captain surrenders to the hopelessness of his predicament and burns up with the sun (after having rescued the ship). There he stands, alone against the universe after having sacrificed himself for the sake of humanity. His situation represents the end of a committed artist's life, to me, an ending which sees that artist forced to face the beautifully horrific details of life, up close and personal.