Something to watch tonight: Monday 15 April

Sunshine (Boyle, 2007)

Thanks to Civil War, Alex Garland is the man of the moment and it was nice serendip­ity that my review of Sunshine – a film he write for reg­u­lar col­lab­or­at­or Danny Boyle – appeared this week back in 2007.

The film stars anoth­er man-of-the-moment, Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy, and has a sup­port­ing cast that would now be unaf­ford­able for any­one except Marvel. Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Benedict Wong and Chris Evans are all great but it’s the concept and exe­cu­tion that really grabs you. 

The law of unin­ten­ded con­sequences is per­fectly illus­trated in Danny Boyle’s won­der­ful sci-fi pot-boiler Sunshine. In 50 years time our Sun will begin to fade, threat­en­ing all life on Earth. A mis­sion is put togeth­er that will reignite the Sun using “all avail­able fis­sile mater­i­al”. Asking for trouble, they call it Icarus. When Icarus I dis­ap­pears before com­plet­ing the mis­sion, Icarus II is launched.

One of the defin­i­tions of mad­ness is repeat­ing the same beha­viour expect­ing a dif­fer­ent out­come and, sure enough, the crew are forced to deal with mys­ter­ies they haven’t trained for and every ‘solu­tion’ just gets them deep­er into trouble. Like the best science-fiction there is a meta­phor­ic­al qual­ity about the story that tran­scends the hok­um and Sunshine is a stun­ning remind­er that human­kind is plenty smart enough to des­troy the plan­et but not clev­er enough to save itself.

Also fea­tured in that Capital Times review from a scarcely believ­able 17 years ago, the “simple-minded teen ripoff of Rear Window” Disturbia, Spanish black com­edy Ferpect Crime, Zhang Yimou’s “stun­ning visu­al achieve­ment” Curse of the Golden Flower, and Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver in Snow Cake.

Where to watch Sunshine

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and UK: Streaming on Disney+

USA: Digital rent­al from Apple, Amazon or Microsoft

Further listening

Last Friday night I made my reg­u­lar appear­ance on RNZ Nights with Emile Donovan and we chat­ted about Civil War (where I fear I may have dampened his enthu­si­asm some­what), Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces (where I think I stoked his enthu­si­asm) and Out of the Blue (where enthu­si­asm was shared equally).