Sunshine: Facing the Unknowable, Accepting the Inevitable

    1.  Background Radiation

It is no wonder that ancient civilizations often deified the Sun.

It is the source of all life on Earth. Without it, we would be a frozen husk of a rocky planet, no different from any of the countless celestial objects in the night sky.

At the same time, it contains some of the most dramatic forces in the universe. It’s gravitational force is so large that it undergoes nuclear fusion, turning it from a bundle of gases into a fiery plasma, with incredibly high temperatures and dramatic magnetic fields – noticed here on earth in solar flare blackouts and auroras (the Northern Lights).

It is so bright, even millions of miles away, that we cannot stand looking into it for more than a fraction of a second, lest we cause permanent damage to our eyes.

Sunshine (2007) is, on its surface, another space movie. It predates other fantastic movies like The Martian and Interstellar, yet it fits right alongside them, and, in many cases, surpasses them.

To take Sunshine at face value, however, is to massively undersell it.

I am a lifelong agnostic atheist, a physicist, a non-believer in any sort of supernatural phenomenon, and also someone who considers spirituality central to my life. In light of all this, I have no reservations labeling Sunshine as a movie about the intersection between spirituality and science, and how these are not only not mutually exclusive, but necessary partners.

The premise of Sunshine is simple. The year is 2057. Our Sun has suddenly started dimming billions of years early, plunging the Earth into an endless winter, slowing killing off all life. One ship, aptly named Icarus-I, was sent to restart the Sun several years previous, mysteriously failing.

Aside from this, the viewer need not know too much of the details of how life on Earth has evolved. The crew of Icarus-II – as well as us, the viewers – have but one goal: deliver a massive nuclear bomb to the Sun and set off a chain reaction that will jump-start the Sun’s fusion.

We are introduced to a diverse and competent crew. There is Cassie (Rose Bryne), the pilot; Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), the captain; Harvey (Troy Garity), comms officer; Searle (Cliff Curtis), psych officer; Trey (Benedict Wong), the navigator; Mace (Chris Evans), the engineer; and the main character, Capa (Cillian Murphy), the physicist. Each of these characters plays an important role in this voyage, and each of them equally comes to face their own very specific downfall.

    2.The Harsh Light of Day

The very beginning of the movie, however, serves as a microcosm of the rest of the film.

We are shown Searle observing the Sun on the observation deck, through a filtered window covering an entire wall. With the Sun at a point where Searle has to squint in order to see it, he is told by the computer that he is seeing 2% of the full brightness. Inquiring over whether he could see 4%, he is told that that would, to paraphrase, burn out his eyes. The best the computer can do is “3.1% for a period of not longer than 30 seconds.” At this brightness, Searle is overcome by the light, getting lost within it.

We are incapable of handling the massive power of the sun, even over 30 million miles out. We can only truly comprehend and experience a tiny, tiny fraction of that. Any more and we are destroyed.

The next character we see sunbathing in this way is Kaneda, the captain.

Each character’s death, too, is foreshadowed at some point earlier in the movie. Searle, later in the movie, with no way back to Icarus-II, turns off the filters in the observation room and views the Sun at 100%. Kaneda, with no way back to the airlock in time, faces the Sun rushing toward him on the heat shields, with Searle yelling through the comms, What do you see?!

For Searle – and frankly, all of the characters in their own ways – the titular sunshine becomes an obsession. Capa and Cassie are haunted by dreams of falling into the sun. Searle and Kaneda use the observation deck. And, as we see later, Pinbacker is consumed by it.

There are many reviews that go over the first two thirds of Sunshine, usually heaping praise, and following that up with “…but, the last third of the movie turns into a slasher film, and severely disappoints.”

The reason I chose Sunshine as my third movie was because of this fact.

The first two thirds of the movie set up our characters and the conflict well. We have Trey’s failure, leading to Icarus II taking damage from the solar wind; we have Capa and Mace’s fight over communication difficulties. We have dramatic visuals and reminders that any error when dealing with something as domineering and overwhelming as the Sun means near-certain death.

But, rather than dragging the rest of the movie down, the last third presents the essence of the film. It is where the big ideas that were set down in the first part are realized.

So, in analyzing and discussing the last third of the movie, there’s one character we’re going to have to go over: Pinbacker.

Pinbacker, as we learn at the outset of the film, is the Captain of Icarus-I. He seems well-adjusted, and there is little indication for what happened to Icarus-I, especially once we find out it is still orbiting the Sun and transmitting.

We soon figure out that Pinbacker has become a god-like entity whose skin is practically entirely burnt off – at least, from what little we can see of him.

You see, the Pinbacker we deal with in the last third of the movie is never directly seen. The effect that the cinematographer decided to go with whenever Pinbacker is on screen is practically identical to the effect that we get every time a character looks at the Sun at near its full intensity. There is a high-pitched screech. A shimmer of light. And much like the Sun, neither the characters nor the viewers are able to stare directly at Pinbacker.

Pinbacker’s constant attestations that he “spoke to god for 7 years” and that this is all part of the plans of a higher power are no coincidence either.

Pinbacker is, yes, a real character in the movie.

But he is not meant to literally be a severely burned captain who somehow gained powers from staring at the Sun for seven years.

Pinbacker is the personification of madness. He is the Sun made manifest in human form. His tearing apart the team, person by person, in the way each character feared most is intentional. It is these members succumbing to the strain, fear, panic, and awe of being in the presence of something so enormous, so strong, and so, frankly, holy. Believer or not, the power of the Sun is enough to make you lose your breath. The first time I learned that the sun was more than 99% of the total mass of the solar system, I felt minuscule. I felt what I assume is the same feeling one would feel in the presence of their own gods. It was a spiritual experience.

And this sense of enormity, of coming to terms with these huge, existential truths, is as likely to bring you to grand revelations as it is to destroy you.

Staring into the Sun renders one man an insane, otherworldly husk of a human being. It begins to pull in Searle, hence his increasingly desperate attempts to figure out what Kaneda sees in his last moments. It torments at least two of the characters with dreams of their mortality.

The only character who makes it out of the entire movie with any sense of peace is the very character who not only has come to terms with what he must do (and what that means for him specifically), but also the character who seems to have an intrinsic respect for the Sun as a thing, not needing to parse its nature from any particular angle. He’s the ship’s physicist, sure, which means that he understands the sun at its most fundamental, yet he also has the most poetic view of the mission as a whole. Asked by Cassie if he fears death, he describes the explosion as a rebirth, not a fiery cataclysm. He is only able to face and deal with the enormity of the knowledge imparted by the Sun because of his ability to face it, as well as his sense of mortality, and let that pass through him.

It is because of all this that I disagree with the consensus that Sunshine is a missed opportunity of a movie, a perfect two-thirds of a movie with a horrendous ending. Nothing could be further from the truth. The last third of the movie contextualizes the beginning of the film. It takes a great sci-fi movie and transforms it into a movie about our limitations as human beings, of coming to terms with our own impermanence and of accepting that there is so much that we, both individually and as a whole, will and can never understand.

3. The Dying of the Light

I have had a keen knowledge of this fact from when I was very young, as I’ve mentioned in previous essays. I first gained a comprehension of death around the age of 8 – a sense of mortality that expressed itself in a strong dread, of trying to figure out how long I had left with the things that mattered most to a child. I remember one particular night where I was gripped by a fear of rabies after reading a story from Scary Stories to Read in the Dark and couldn’t sleep a wink, for fear that either myself or someone I loved would be struck down by it. As I’ve grown, this dread has ebbed and flowed, but it is, of course, part of the human condition. It is a struggle we all face at some point or another. Attempting to wrap your head around it is asking to be destroyed by it. It is staring into the void, allowing yourself to be taken in by it. It leads to you running yourself in circles, trying to find another solution to this discontinuation of your consciousness. Frankly, most of the time, I think people just don’t think about it, avoid it by all costs, and deal with it as a “well, that’s far enough away that we don’t have to worry about it.”

I don’t have an answer as to how we as humans deal with this in a consistent and healthy way. If anyone does have the answer, please please please let me know. But it is unavoidable. It is all-encompassing. It is awe- and terror-inspiring. And ultimately, it is fundamental to all life.

I’m not sure that Boyle meant for this film to be an allegory of existential dread, and of the limitations of knowledge.

All I can say is that staring into Sunshine has revealed, through my lens, a tale that is both the story of a group of people trying to save the planet through a “stellar bomb,” the story of space and isolation weighing on us as humans, and a story of the crossroads where spirituality and dread meet.

I have a sense of spirituality regarding the universe and this life, despite my lack of religious beliefs, because it is an amazing and terrifying place. The same pathways that to some say religion still fire within my brain, my heart, my body. Maybe they say something different, but that is not an assessment on the veracity of whether my worldview is right, or yours is, or anyone’s is. It is saying that spirituality, in any of its forms, is a key part of being human. It is a drive in us, and wherever that drive pushes us is more important than what is driving us, or why. Why care about the nature of matter at its most basic levels or the universe on its largest scales if we’re being purely scientific and practical? In my particular case, I find myself driven by a need to understand as much as I can – a need that is driven into me both by trying to pull apart everything and see its core, and by time nipping at my ankles, reminding me constantly of how temporary my station on this earth is.

Yes, our endings are preordained (unless, as I hope, San Junipero becomes a reality!). But trying to wrap our heads around that and make it simple, whether that be through a scientific lens, or a religious one, or a psychological one, or a philosophical one, etc., is to miss the whole. All that we can truly know is that sense of awe, that sense of smallness, and that sense of having a purpose nonetheless.

Without drive, without amazement in the face of this universe, what do we have?

5/5