Sunshine

‘Sunshine’ is British director Danny Boyle’s 2007 foray into the science fiction genre, a venture that he had been planning for many years. It is his third collaboration with British writer Alex Garland who also provided the concept and screenplays for ‘The Beach’ (2000) and ‘28 Days Later’ (2002). It seems that the duo has established a winning formula; if not commercially, without question artistically, with ‘Sunshine’ being perhaps the most impressive example of their creative partnership given the film’s complexity and scale.

If the Hollywood megastars have been missing in Boyle’s post ‘The Beach’ career, he has made up for it ten-fold with ambition. He cleared the streets of London (albeit not at rush hour) in his not-a-zombie-movie ‘28 Days Later’, effortlessly running his digital camera over landmarks and landscapes whilst conjuring a sense of apocalypticism that had been missing from British film for some time. With ‘Sunshine’ he goes a step further; crafting an equally isolated setting in space, leaving Earth completely untouched save for the ultimate shot of the film in which he again treats us to his apocalyptic vision.

Set 50 years in the future, with the Sun’s power drastically deteriorating, a team of astronauts and scientists are sent on a mission to reignite it with a massive stellar bomb. Their ship, Icarus II (a name in which all manner of irony and cynicism can be found) travels directly towards the dying star, protected by an enormous circular heat shield. Upon reaching the ‘payload delivery point’, the bomb is to be released and propelled unmanned towards the Sun’s surface, whilst the ship thrusts in the opposite direction. We join the crew several years in, just as they prepare to enter the ‘dead zone’ from which they will lose the ability to communicate with Earth. As tensions between the crew begin to mount, they pick up the distress signal of the ill-fated Icarus I, which failed to complete its mission for unknown reasons. Faced with the choice to remain on course or intercept the stranded vessel, the onboard physicist Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy) decides to risk the detour for a second chance at completing the mission should their first attempt fail. This decision, which proves divisive amongst the crew, sparks a chain of events that puts their lives and their mission in jeopardy.

The focus of my discussion will be to challenge a line of argument which has somewhat damaged the critical reception of the film post-release; that of its scientific inaccuracy and perceived lack of plausibility. A number of issues have contributed towards this argument – which were made in a review of the film in New Scientist magazine and a column in The Times, both written by journalists with backgrounds in solar physics – and if you are cynical enough to sit through the film with nothing but fierce scepticism with regard to the film’s inaccuracies, these are some of the questions that you might ask: why are the astronauts walking and not floating? Why, to an exact degree of scientific certainty, is the Sun dying? Isn’t the Sun supposed to burn for another 5 billion years? Wouldn’t it take a bomb much, much bigger to reignite it anyway? And, of course; isn’t it true that as our Sun dies it will in fact produce more heat, engulfing the Earth as it enters its red giant phase? These were the questions on Anjana Ahuja’s mind as she watched the film, leading her to the proud assertion that “Danny Boyle could have achieved the same level of scientific fidelity in ‘Sunshine’ by giving a calculator to a schoolboy”. Unfortunately, all Ahuja has demonstrated, despite scoring points with her solar-physicist fraternity, is that she is incapable of understanding the workings of cinema, much less succumbing to its power. I wonder; does she watch all films expecting such a rich, unbroken vein of realism?

Due to this attack on the film’s credibility, the filmmakers themselves have been put on the defensive, having felt it necessary to offer some of the answers to these questions – answers that are extraneous to the film itself. Frankly, this is a shame, not least because it weakens the integrity of the film. Imagine if David Lynch were forced into a dialogue that revealed the innermost secrets of his films because an expert on dream interpretation demanded that he clarify certain things. Granted, with science it is different; science is the study of fact, of which there can be a degree of uncertainty, but little room for interpretation. As such, scientists are quick to pounce on mistakes that relate to these facts. Art, which can loosely be defined as a pursuit which is opposed to science, is an area in which many of these mistakes (or misinterpretations) are made. In ‘Sunshine’, and indeed the wider focus of the science fiction film, this dichotomy of art versus science is extremely prominent. The ‘art’ is, of course, that of cinema whilst the ‘science’ is represented by the film’s subject matter, and because of this it has an influence on both the narrative and the aesthetic qualities of the film. As an artist, Boyle is faced with the task of seeing things from a cinematic perspective first and foremost, whereas the film’s detractors have clearly chosen a scientific perspective and thus disregarded the cinematic conventions to which the film must adhere.

A number of examples can be used to illustrate this dichotomy. The first is the temporal setting of the film; the year 2057. This seems to be the source of much of the film’s derision by critics, who frequently point out that 50 years in the future is not a significant enough timeframe for the Sun to have reduced in power. Boyle’s reaction to this specific line of questioning has led to the following explanation: The Sun is not dying in terms of reaching the end of its life cycle; it is suffering from an infection caused by something called a Q-Ball that has been trapped in the Sun and is sapping its power. This explanation was included in the back-story of the film but didn’t make the final cut, leaving the floodgates open for scientists to pounce on the film’s inaccuracy. In fact, Boyle took artistic licence in placing the film 50 years in the future so as to maintain a level of familiarity which would allow the audience to relate to the characters and their mission. If the film were to take place 5 billion years in the future in order to completely satisfy all scientific parameters, it would be impossible for an audience to empathise with any part of the film. Such a level of alienation would not only trivialise the importance of the mission but essentially give infinite scope for both the narrative and aesthetic qualities of any film. Put simply, even an artistic interpretation of events that take place 5 billion years in the future would be an exercise in futility.

Another aspect of the film that scientists have taken exception with is that of the artificial gravity onboard Icarus II, which is apparent but never explained. Stemming from this line of argument is a further criticism which relates to a scene towards the end of the film in which the concept of gravity itself seems to unravel as the bomb grows nearer and nearer to the Sun. To avoid the failure of their mission, the remaining crew are forced to detach the bomb from Icarus II and manually arm it, meaning that they must accompany it to its delivery point. The bomb itself is a massive cube structure on which the surviving members of the crew stand. When they are forced over the edge of the cube, they plummet downwards but gradually begin to slow before coming to a stop and finding themselves able to stand. It is a disorienting visual experience, with Boyle refusing to establish a definitive horizontal or vertical plain.

On explaining this short scene, the scientific impossibility is obvious, but on my first (and subsequent) viewings I found that the film offers a subtle and clever explanation. When charged with making the decision as the whether the crew should alter their trajectory to rendezvous with Icarus I, Capa is seen mulling over the physics of their task. The computer-generated images before him show the payload delivery procedure whilst the ship’s onboard computer (Icarus, a nod to both Mother and HAL) gives a running narrative. As the bomb nears the surface of the Sun, the projection crashes with Icarus stating that “[the] reliability of projection has dropped below 45%; remaining projection is not open to useful speculation; variables infinite, accuracy unknown.” Capa clarifies; “Between the boosters and the gravity of the Sun the velocity of the payload will get so great that space and time will become smeared together and everything will distort. Everything will be unquantifiable.” My assumption, one which I thought to be quite reasonable, was that this lack of gravitational cohesion was a cleverly stylised way of portraying the distortion of time and space – after all, it occurs at the right point in the film as the bomb is heading into the Sun. It turns out that I am wrong when I could have quite easily been right. In an explanation prompted by further derision, Boyle explains that within the cube there is the compressed mass of a small moon, which explains the reason why there is artificial gravity as well as why the crew can stand on both horizontal and vertical plains.

This seems absurd to me, and if anything, a little harder to believe than my own theory, but one must remember that this explanation is not included in the film. Whereas scientists who have ‘reviewed’ the film have lambasted the lack of scientific precision, I believe that Boyle should be praised for refusing to over-explain every aspect. Would a ‘Sunshine’ constantly bogged down with jargon and science be half as entertaining, even half as interesting? A science fiction film, to an extent, writes its own licence to challenge certain things and therefore any element of ‘realism’ is apparent entirely at the filmmakers’ discretion. In any case, a ‘realistic’ sci-fi film is one that would eschew the very qualities of the genre that make these films so fantastical and awe-inspiring. If sci-fi films sought to convey a realistic and unchallenging vision, there would be little need for a science fiction genre at all – in what way would it distinguish itself from other genres? Science fiction, and ‘Sunshine’, is so intensely cinematic that its epic scale and ambition could seldom be captured by any other medium.

It is really a shame that ‘Sunshine’s’ filmmakers have been forced to fight their corner and, in the process, unearth a series of explanations that undermine the film that they have made. When a film is faced with the question of cinema vs. science, it is quite obvious that some decisions have to be made to purposefully contradict scientific fact in order to be in keeping with audience expectations and, more importantly, create a sense of excitement. ‘Sunshine’ could have quite easily been a science lesson, but cinema is only an educational tool when it wishes to be. A didactic approach to telling this story would have ultimately made it void of emotion, passion and excitement. ‘Sunshine’s’ real strength is it’s manipulation of the cinematic medium itself. Due to the film’s highly stylised aestheticism and artistic vision, a viewing is more an experience in which the visual qualities of the film by far outweigh the scientific element. For this reason alone, the line of argument that I have focused upon is almost irrelevant as what ‘Sunshine’ strives for more than any other thing is a form of visual expression.

It is with regret that I have ignored the aesthetics of this film, which really deserves two reviews; one to argue for the film’s artistic integrity in terms of narrative as I have attempted to do, and another to pay tribute to Danny Boyle’s virtuoso directing, which results in a film so aesthetically outstanding that it makes a serious case for being the ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ of the 21st century. Narratively, ‘Sunshine’ skilfully manipulates the generic conventions of the science fiction film whilst incorporating an existentialism that clearly owes a debt to Kubrick’s masterpiece. Elements of psychology and religion further enhance the experience, creating an extraordinarily well-rounded film in a genre that has in the past offered limited scope. ‘Sunshine’ should not be judged on the reviews that it has been given, in which scientific inaccuracy has been given precedent over cinematic vision. Boyle has crafted a remarkable film, one which takes it’s viewers on a journey and shows them places that they have not previously seen; a rare thing indeed. His vision, demonstrated here, far outshines the arguments that have been made to counter my opinion of this great cinematic achievement.

Watch

Country: UK/USA
Budget: £20,000,000 aprox.
Length: 108mins

Bibliography:
Ahuja, Anjana (2007) ‘Sunshine on My Mind’ [online] Last accessed: 10th September 2008 at: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article1598953.ece Chown, Marcus (2007)
‘Review: Sunshine’, in New Scientist, magazine no. 2598

Filmography:
'28 Days Later', 2002, Danny Boyle, DNA Films
'2001: A Space Odyssey', 1968, Stanley Kubrick, MGM
'The Beach', 2000, Danny Boyle, Figment Films

Pub/2008

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