Icarus Descending: Boyle's 2001-Derivative Sunshine

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Cillian Murphy in Sunshine

Thought this, Scottish film-maker Danny Boyle's most daringly ambitious film project to date, might be worth a mention here. I haven't seen it yet, but am about to ... It's been - how long? Decades? - since good, metaphysical SF has graced the big screen, and while the plot is a familiar though rarely properly realised one - the hauntology of the unexplained disappearance, the sublime of radical otherness, etc, from 2001 and Picnic at Hanging Rock to Stalker/Solaris etc - hopefully Boyle's track record with both Trainspotting and 28 Days Later (though his other films were eminently disposable) will serve him well here and his film won't degenerate into either supernatural fantasy [Contact, Event Horizon, etc] or new-age egoism (Soderbergh's re-make of Tarkovsky's Solaris, The Matrix trilogy, etc]], or equally redundant pseudo-scientific "explanation." With a seemingly huge dependence on CGI (and Ligeti's Lux Aeterna, as first used by Kubrick and later by Cameron ), I'm already fearing Soderbergh new-ageism ..

Hopefully not. Time to find out ...

Sunshine: Trailer A ; Sunshine: Trailer B

Sunshine: Official site, with interviews and film clips.

Mark Kermode's review in The Guardian.
Michael Dwyer's review-interview in The Irish Times.

[As to Icarus' wings being burnt by the sun, here, coincidentally, is Kubrick's last public appearance - accepting via pre-recorded video the D W Griffith Award - before his death, in which he makes full use of the myth].

 

[Dial]

Great movie but just a little dissappointing.

Interesting insight from Peter Bradshaw writing in the Guardian:

''I have to confess that there were times when Sunshine looked like a clever, but essentially cool anthology of mannerisms and ideas from other movies, and I wasn't sure about the great dramatic encounter in its final act, which did not, for my money, emerge satisfactorily from the personalities established at the very start.''

I can't say the second part of this sentence occurred to me, but what I did find unsatisfactory was the way the movie segued from a grounded strangeness and unease, completely natural to the wonder and mystery of the circumstances, to the comic book/x-files sort of strangeness depicted by the shimmering bad guy. How did this form come about in the first place? And how did he/it arrive undetected on Icarus 2? It felt slasher and cheesy relative to the ground that preceded.

Perhaps we're supposed to take that as an entirely proper flight into the mysteries/irrationalities of being. I don't think these mysteries need dressing up. They're always already there, attendant on the rational and 'everyday'. And lost as soon as they are made overt in this way. Boyle tried by making the figure so indistinct, but the best route would have been more thought into the actual storyline and events.

Anyway, cool movie. The sun from the observation lounge was superb. And the intensity beyond the shields just incredible. Trippy, dare I say. More of the impersonal and awesome, and less of the Wes Craven would have made this for me.

 

[tox]

really liked this film.

loved the contrast between the natural liquid sun and the digital quality it assumed when reflected in the pixel-esque filters on the front of the ship. sooo beautiful! reminded me of nintendo's use of the same juxtaposition in twilight princess.

music was good throughout and really added to the atmosphere (apart from the end credits).

the story was a bit meh to be honest, and didn't quite add up to my mind, but i didn't care at all while watching the film as the other elements more than made up for it.