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SUNSHINE
Directed by: Danny Boyle.
Produced by: Andrew Macdonald.
Written by: Alex Garland.
Director of Photography: Alwin Küchler.
Edited by: Chris Gill.
Production Designer: Mark Tildesley.
Visual Effects Supervisor: Tom Wood.
Music by: John Murphy & Underworld.
Released by: Fox Searchlight.
Country of Origin: UK. 108 Min. Rated R.
With: Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Mark Strong, Benedict Wong & Michelle Yeoh.

It’s been a very long time since there’s been a science fiction film that gets to the central problem of “saving the world” and takes its vision to incredible lengths. Fifty years in the future, the crew of the Icarus II travels towards the sun to setoff a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan in order to keep it burning for the Earth’s inhabitants to survive. It follows the failure of the Icarus 1 to drop its payload.

There’s the danger that screenwriter Alex Garland could fall into the easy trappings of just simple cardboard cutouts for the international crew. Luckily, he doesn't, aside perhaps for when guys heatedly argue and a nurturing Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), who cares for her large garden on the ship. But when Trey (Benedict Wong) slips up, missing by mere degrees the calculation of the ship’s course, he feels a personal horror at what’s at stake. This one character, without revealing too much, becomes one of the film’s tragic figures, feeling completely responsible for a terrible mishap.

As things go more and more wrong following a detour (to check out the wreckage of the original Icarus 1), the result’s not simply a case of the usual by-the-numbers deaths or a pat “there’s nothing you could’ve done” scene. Director Danny Boyle and Garland examine the nature of choice and acceptance and redemption. What is brilliantly explored is an aspect that many sci-fi filmmakers don’t get near, something akin to existentialism, while the film also branches out into suspenseful territory in the great tradition of peril-in-space films, even becoming at times surreal.

The best science fiction matches such strong ideas and dramatic conflict with a vision original enough to circumvent a reliance on visual effects. Production designer Mark Tildesley creates simple corridors and conference rooms out of something like in Alien and then creates ominous sets for the Icarus 1, which is covered in the dust of its deceased crew. Tom Wood’s visual effects are splendidly innovative and never look very obvious, even when the Icarus II gets close to the sun. They serve the story just as much as Boyle’s space shots of the Icarus in flight. The music is surprisingly subtle, and most strikingly, the editing brings out as many pure thrills via jump cuts, single-frame cutting, and brief freeze-frames.

Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, though in a more life affirming context, Sunshine takes the viewer to places never experienced and packs enough thought behind the visuals to be strangely exhilarating cinema. Yet it’s a shame that for the past month or so there’s been little to no marketing for the film in the United States – it’s been released for months now not just in the U.K. but worldwide – and is likely to be a total surprise if not for word of mouth and the trailers leaked on youtube. In a summer when you can’t escape a Harry Potter or Transformers commercial, it’s abhorrent to think that the studio’s marketing brass believes there’s just little or no room for a work that might challenge expectations. Jack Gattanella
July 20, 2007