[Originally Published: March 10, 2009]

When I first saw Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, his epic out-of-nowhere British zombie/uber cannibalistic/virus outbreak/mutant apocalypse mind-blowingly violent death mental film, I immediately had the same reaction I have with any incredibly talented director. Give the bastard some serious coin to spin the celluloid fantastic into hyperspace. See what they can do. Give them enough rope to either jump across the whole psychedelic lake and swing back with their sanity intact and talents furthered, OR the rope tangles around their artistic neck, strangling themselves on their own self-indulgence.

Boyle reached his total mass creative potential in a completely unexpected way with the unpredictable critical and commercial success of Slumdog Millionaire. However, Boyle’s film before the East Indian tempest in a tea pot, is an intense and visually stunning piece of work that just seemed to come and go under the cultural radar in the 2007 theatrical night like so many other obscure gems. Indeed, this week’s Hidden Flick is Sunshine.

The science fiction film helmed by Boyle, and written by Alex Garland, tells the tale of a ship in 2057 sent from Earth to detonate a nuclear weapon “the size of Manhattan” within our dying Sol in a desperate attempt to reinvigorate and give new life to a dying star. The international cast is surrounded by ingenious CGI effect shots, and the usual Boyle setups which neither foreshadow, nor echo anything that has really come before in the film.

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What I enjoy about Boyle’s work is that one never quite knows what character will prevail and what character may just be a decoy. I suppose Slumdog Millionaire made the hero quite explicit, but Boyle’s best traits are sometimes appreciated when one doesn’t quite know whom to trust, and when all hell will descend upon a film. If in doubt, watch Trainspotting for a morally ambiguous but brilliant character study by Boyle. One can sense that someone has hit rock bottom, junkies die every day, and the quest for nothing inevitably brings nothing, so the audience watching Trainspotting has no idea how the various characters will find a way out of their death-worship lifestyle. Which is exactly what brings down Sunshine just a tad as the film shifts into its final stages. One can clearly see who will prevail, and who will be vanquished, and how they will die and how they will live in their final moments. Unike in 28 Days Later or Slumdog Millionaire, the audience hasn’t really been given enough emotional content to invest in these characters. If you don’t care, you don’t care, and that ain’t always a perfect little Zen koan, but it definitely rules the day in literature or the cinema.

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However, that can appear to be a minor quibble in a film which has some rather modest goals, executes its visual styles in a defiantly unique way, and generates a new-found respect for the awesome power of an enormous star—dying, or otherwise. I am waiting for Danny Boyle to make his true Apocalypse Now, THE film that combines all of his hyper realistic sci-fi/horror/post-superman/triumph of the common man in an insane society tendencies without completely losing touch with what makes his work so interesting, so captivating in an era where to hope is to dream of big ideas that work. Boyle shoots scenes that shock and repel, excite and entice, and he directs films that get one to care about the story, even if one is a bit ambiguous about the various characters. In Sunshine, he explores isolation, survival, and the legacy of a star’s haunting impact, and more often than not, he succeeds without compromising his vision.

- Randy Ray

Randy Ray

Randy Ray is a Senior Editor at Jambands.com, and a Contributing Writer with Relix magazine. He has written Hidden Flick, a look into obscure films, for Hidden Track since early 2008, and is a published author in various fiction mediums, as well.

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