Sunshine DVD Review

Danny Boyle, director of Sunshine, proves to be an extremely talented, yet undeniably frustrating filmmaker. With his previous film, 28 Days Later, Boyle sought to reinvigorate a dead genre. Ironically enough, it was the undead genre that he hoped to bring back to life, and he did an admirable job in many ways. 28 Days Later was a visceral and frightening zombie film for the art-house crowd. It did its job as a zombie horror film while simultaneously presenting a thought provoking treatise on a bleak future that might not be as distant as we would hope. However, for all of its philosophical ideas and eerie imagery, the film started to lose its bearings in the third act. It was entertaining enough, but the climax simply didn’t live up to the parts that preceded it.

And why do I bring all of this up you may ask? Because Sunshine, Danny Boyle’s newest endeavor, suffers from the same third act pitfall as 28 Days Later. It begins as a beautiful film and quite suddenly devolves into a beautiful mess.

But let’s start with what’s good, because there’s a lot to like about this film. Sunshine follows in the footsteps of numerous science fiction classics, namely Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Tarkofsky’s Solaris, and Ridley Scott’s Alien. If you’re going to emulate (or in some cases steal from) a science fiction film, those are definitely the three to do it from, and Boyle crafts Sunshine as an amalgamation of all three. It’s not as good as any of them mind you, but they’re time honored classics of the genre which are nigh impossible to match. In a world filled with action-oriented science fiction, Sunshine gets points simply for being interesting and thought provoking.

The plot itself takes place in 2057, and involves a group of the world’s best scientists flying through space on their ship, Icarus II, in order to reignite earth’s dying sun, and thereby save humanity from extinction. It’s pure speculative fiction and admittedly rather silly seeing as the sun isn’t supposed to burn out for another ten billion years. However, the plot isn’t really what’s important, but rather the inherent themes explored therein. Man’s place in the universe, the existence of God vs. science, and the value of the life of the crewmembers vs. the survival of humanity are examples of the various ideas that are explored in the film. As far as I can remember, there hasn’t been a truly thought-provoking science fiction film since Steven Soderbergh’s remake of Solaris in 2002. As such, Sunshine comes as a welcome breath of fresh air.

That is until the third act, when the film knocks the wind out of you. I don’t want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say that the film takes a violent turn from intellectual sci-fi film to derivative horror film. The change is so sudden that it left me shocked and scratching my head. Whereas the third-act in 28 Days Later may have been somewhat disappointing, at least it still fell in line with the rest of the film. In Sunshine, the third-act is much more detrimental, in that it not only changes the course of the film, but arguably diminishes the quality of everything that came before it. To be fair, some people have argued that the third-act switch is important to the themes of the film. While I’m not sure that I agree, even if it were the case, the stilted execution of those themes leaves me with the same distaste for the sudden change. It is to Boyle’s credit as a director that I was continually awed by the presentation and the visuals even while I was shaking my head at the change in story. The film may end up as a bit of a mess, but it’s still impossible to look away from.

While the special features on the DVD do very little to address my complaints about the film, they do enhance the science and philosophy behind it. A group of deleted scenes are included that don’t alter the overall story in anyway, but actually would have made for some nice atmospheric scene extensions in my opinion. These types of films tend to benefit from a ponderous pace, and I think Sunshine wouldn’t have been hurt had a few of these tidbits been left in. A series of web production diaries fill up a runtime of about forty minutes, but are frustratingly brief and superficial individually. Danny Boyle also saw fit to include two unrelated short films on the DVD simply to give them more exposure. While they add nothing to the film, they are interesting in their own right. Far and away the best special features on the disc are the pair of audio commentaries. The first one is a solo track from Danny Boyle who bursts with enthusiasm. The commentary is full of details, with the only drawback being that he doesn’t address any of the problems with the film. As good as Boyle’s commentary is he’s in danger of being upstaged by Brian Cox, Sunshine’s scientific technical advisor, on the other commentary. While the prospect of a science commentary sounded sleep inducing to me, I was very pleasantly surprised. He is full of interesting insights regarding the science and philosophy of Sunshine, and always manages to put things into layman’s terms so that I was never lost. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say it was one of the best commentaries I’ve heard in a long time.

Like the mythological character that the spaceship Icarus is named after in the film, Sunshine aims for great heights as a film, but falls into a downward spiral at the end of its flight. Be that as it may, I’d much rather watch a film aim high and miss its mark than stay safely near the ground, and Sunshine reaches for the stars.