Sunshine

All hail, Danny Boyle! May he reign for as long as he lives!

Sunshine finds a way to make space beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Out in the middle of God's creation seperated from home. When things go wrong (and they do) you're on your own. On your own to save the world. From a solar winter. During which little kids wear winter coats and make snowmen. The latter being the vision of the terrible world a dying star has made. It's hardly what I expected to see after all the hub bub in space. It seemed much worse up there - losing oxygen, fires, decoupled airlocks, faulty sun shields, and what have you. That's where the real danger is.

There's lots of beauty in the film. Even when the film starts to race near the end to build toward its dramatic finale, it finds time to flash pictures of space, the sun, and the scientists trying to survive both.

The film was primarily story driven. There's so much going on in Sunshine that it is difficult at first to get more than a surface introduction to the film's characters and their personalities. Certain actors get chances to shine (pun intended), slowly building their characters as the action builds along side them. Cliff Curtis (Three Kings, Bringing Out the Dead), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four franchise, Not Another Teen Movie, Cellular), Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later, Troy), and Cillian Murphy (hail him while you're at it) all get their time in the sun (pun intended). I expect good things from Curtis and Murphy, but I was pleasantly surprised by Evans and Byrne. Each of these two performers have been likable enough in the past without actually standing out among their peers. But they're good in Sunshine. Evans is macho, but bears the weight of the seriousness of his crew's task and is forced to voice his unpopular opinions in order to keep them blind to all else but that all-important mission: re-ignite the dying sun. Byrne gets to play the sweet natured scientist perhaps too human to save humanity.

And well, Murphy...he can't seem to help but turn in wonderful performance after performance after performance. He's always interesting, always stretching while appearing to be moving effortlessly through his characters' facial expressions (those eyes!). But what really gets me every time is his voice, how he can turn a line over with his tongue to inject all sorts of subtlety and emotion into his words. He also has what many actors and actresses would kill for: screen presence. When he is on screen, I am watching him. There's a lot going on in the film, lots of interesting developments along the journey to the sun, but I was never more interested as when Cillian was on screen acting. It's more than charisma. I think Evans has that. It's a magnetism that can only be observed without truly being explained.

After all that gushing, I must reinterate that the stars of the film are actually the story and the visuals. They pack a punch. Alex Garland, the screenwriter, knows how to plot a suspense movie. He also knows how to have characters spout out science jargon and make it sound real, credible, and utterly of the moment. There's a lot of mumbo jumbo, but I was never lost.

And those visuals! Near the beginning of the film a character talks about how darkness is the lack of everything, it is nothing. But the beauty of the light is that it fills that seemingly endless space. It washes over nothing and creates something. I heard the words and I liked them, but the filmmakers went further and greater and kept showing me time again how exciting and scary that creation is.

I drove to Cleveland to see the film and I am fully prepared to drive back to see it a second time. For those interested, Cedar Lee is a neat little theater in Cleveland Heights that shows indie movies year round.

I recommend ending your pre-viewing experience here. Don't read anymore reviews, feature articles or interviews, or those great trailers off of Apple.com. They're all great, but Danny Boyle gives away too much when he speaks about the movie and the trailer gives away key plot points all the way into the third act of the film.
Be safe. Watch the movie first. Protect your viewing experience. The power is yours!

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