Defying Mortality: Sunshine

This morning I woke up, and there it was, seeping through the blinds of my window and making its way into the living room of my apartment – this incomparably bright light was an indication that my day had begun. The source of this light, the sun, has an ironically familiar and mundane presence in my life – I have gotten used to it. However, if our diamond of a sun were to vanish, this occurrence would seem to be a statement from a supernatural source that perhaps existing life is no longer supposed to be so. The movie, Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle boldly placed viewers directly in the midst of this hypothetical position. The film presents, to our ever-so surprise and absolutely bewildered astonishment, a notion that humans would not be able to humbly accept such a situation as the end of our existence. Who would have thought? We will grasp onto every last second, week, month, or year of life we can lay our hands on – and the absence of the ultimate energy source driving all life forms cannot get in our way. In a sense, this persistence is venerable; however, this manner of potentially twisting nature presents a few feelings of worry, disaster, and even horror at the possibilities.

The two-thirds disaster portion of the film was almost inevitable – in a mission such as the one presented in the movie, I would be a bit shocked if there weren’t some extremely complicated hurdles to jump. The dilemmas in the beginning of this film progress from bad to worse, and the uncertainty behind the action is in full-throttle. The past reality of the failure of Icarus I looms in the air, and it is only the motivation of the crew members that keeps me holding onto the chance of success in the movie. Each member of the cast, besides perhaps Harvey, reminded me how strongly the world did not want to accept the defeat of mankind. After each character died, I was disturbed but somewhat reassured because of the persistence of the crewmembers to continue on – and I found this character demeanor to be a significant element in the overall effect created by the movie.

A very powerful point in the movie occurred during the conversation between Cassie and Capa directly in front of the payload, when Cassie articulates a key question: “Does it scare you?” From this point on while watching the film, I held onto this question – these words. It wasn’t a notion of whether or not Capa had faith that the hurdles could be overcome. The question asked was whether Capa was scared, whether the audience was terrified by the mission presented in the film, whether there was horror in the possibility that man has the capability of creating a new star from a dying one to create “the big bang on a small scale” – because Cassie was. I believed that this aspect of fear was presented well in the movie after Pinbacker so slyly entered Incarus II – consequently, the film was all horror. Whether we wanted to experience it or not, the film forced us to associate the mission with horror – through the chases after the crewmembers, the bloodshed at every corner, and the death of every last member, we felt the load of the cost that came with twisting nature and attempting to escape mortality, and it wasn’t at all pretty.

There were countless aspects of the movie that contributed to the psychological and emotional states of the viewers as it was experienced. From controlling the use of certain colors to presenting microsecond flashes of the faces of old crewmembers, our audiovisual senses were intentionally manipulated to allow us to feel certain emotions and associate them with the plot and themes of the storyline. Personally, I felt that these elements were significant and worked throughout the movie to allow me to consciously and subconsciously  experience the movie for all the issues it presented about humanity, science, uncertainty, light, darkness, and life in general.