“Sunshine”
2007, directed by Danny Boyle
The director of “Slumdog Millionaire” and “28 Days Later” put his own spin on the science fiction genre in between his reinvention of zombie horror and his Best Picture win. Seeing as he didn’t really come into the public eye until after “Slumdog” became the surprise Oscar champion of 2008, it’s easy to understand how “Sunshine” fell by the wayside. It was made for a small budget, and given only a very limited release. I wouldn’t have even heard about it were it not for the boredom that drove me to read the reviews in an old copy of People magazine while waiting for an appointment. Therefore, even though it received mostly good reviews, this film deserves a second chance because, well, it never really had a first one to begin with.
The plot reads like a bad 70’s disaster film: 50 years from now, the sun is prematurely burning out. Mankind’s only hope is a team of astronauts who will fly to the center of the solar system and shoot a massive nuclear weapon into our star, reigniting it (in theory). But Boyle is wise to avoid focusing on cheesy incidental details and give more thought to the psychological states of the various crewmembers. After all, how would it affect you if you knew the survival of the species depended on your success? This fact also gives rise to interesting moral dilemmas, as the astronauts are forced to repeatedly question the permissibility of sacrificing one another for the good of the mission. I’ll also say that the visual effects alone are worth the price of admission; used sparingly and beautifully, the CGI in “Sunshine” still hold up against (and outdo, in my opinion) the humanoid Na’vi in “Avatar.”
The primary object of interest for me here, though, is the villainous Capt. Pinbacker, the leader of a failed previous mission. Portrayed as an essentially ignorant religious psycho who’s been sunburnt to a crisp, he’s out of place in the flow of the story but serves Boyle’s intention to make “Sunshine” an apologia for atheism. His fatalistic belief in the will of God certainly stands in sharp contrast to the humanistic ethos of heroes Capa (Cillian Murphy) and Mace (Chris Evans). However, while Boyle obviously intended for us to scoff at Pinbacker’s views, I think he raises the film’s most interesting question, even if he mostly lets a nasty-looking futuristic scalpel do his talking: if God decides that humanity’s time is up, at what point do we stop trying to save ourselves and accept it? No matter what you believe, that's a question that a sci-fi film rarely dares to ask.
P.S. Pinbacker, of course, is wrong from even a Christian perspective. If God had really wanted to destroy humanity in "Sunshine," he would have chosen a method that was completely beyond our capacity to halt, and he certainly wouldn't need Pinbacker to stop others from subverting his will. The good captain is, therefore, too out of his mind to really serve as an effective critique of fundamentalist religion, especially Christianity. Then again, perhaps he's not meant to be a critique of the institution, but of the followers. Faith without reason can indeed be a dangerous thing.
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