Sunshine

Yes, I know, I've been watching too many movies for my own good of late. The thing is, I'm sort of treading water at the moment waiting for my latest hopsital tests and I'm in a bad place after my mother died. Watching movies is helping me keep the bad thoughts at bay, but I know its only a temporary measure. Things will change soon, for better or worse. In the mean time however, on we go...


Dir: Danny Boyle

This film didn't do so well in the box office, but I liked it. Essentially its the story of a manned mission to the Sol to save Earth by 'reigniting the dying sun'. Things have already gone wrong with a previous mission and events begin with the unfortunately named Icurus 2 beginning to meet difficulties when it enters the sun's 'dead zone'. At first the difficulties are merely technical, but soon things take a turn for the worse when the ship encounters an automated distress call from Icurus I (the ship of the first mission). Shortly there after a technical miscalculation cripples Icurus 2 forcing the crew to rendezvous with Icurus I. Dramatics then unfold along a predictable course to the conclusion of the film.


On the face of it, it seems like a load of rubbish. Boyle's camera technique and fetish for blurring images doesn't help much either. What saved the experience, for me, was the technical details. The ships, the EVA suits, the various internal details here and there, as well as the colours, the sense of the suns presence and the acting. That is to say the acting was adequate. I would have liked to see more of Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada (see below), but never mind.

'Sunshine' could easily have fallen into the 'Event Horizon' trap, but it doesn't. Whilst it doesn't quite have the quiet ambience of 'Solaris', or the austerity of '2001', it still manages to retain some of their style whilst remaining a drama.

The design of the Icurus 2 itself is a nod in the right direction, but suffers from a singularly spectacular design fault. Nestled behind a vast mirror, the ship is built in a long line. You can see the design on the top image where the ship appears in profile at the end of the title word. The idea is, the mirror protects the ship from the light of the sun. When the mirror suffers damage however, the ship must turn slightly to bring part of it into shadow, thus enabling the crew to fix the mirror (though why they don't have robotics for this is never explained). Turning the mirror naturally brings part of the ship into the light of the sun, destroying , amongst other parts the ships garden and crippling its ability to manufacture oxygen.

Obviously this disaster was needed for the plot to work, but frankly I thought it was a bit childish. Any ship nestling behind a giant solar mirror should do just that, nestle. I can see no sensible notion as to why the ship should protude out the back as it did, nor even why two crew members should crawl out onto the mirror's surface to fix it. The mirror is made up of thousands of flexible lamellar meaning it should be easily accessable from below.

On the other hand, the whole premise of a human crew being needed to plant a giant bomb into the sun is a bit dodgy...