2007: Sunshine

Sunshine (Boyle, 2007) 7/10

In 2057, global warming has yet to occur. The sun rests in space as a fossilized vessel: a dying star enveloping Earth in an everlasting state of winter, a new Ice Age. In a last grasp of fate and destiny, a crew of astronauts, psychologists and scientists has been assembled with the task of re-igniting the sputtering flame through the detonation of a nuclear payload in the solar core.

This is the backdrop to Sunshine, the latest effort by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting; 28 Days Later) and his frequent collaborator author Alex Garland. Beginning in media res, Sunshine introduces us to Earth's saviors as they are slowly inching past the planet Mercury. After the failed mission of the original Icarus, the crew of the Icarus 2 represent the last attempt to salvage Earth. Under the planet's present conditions, there are no more materials for armaments.

Therefore, through conservation and recycling techniques, the crew has managed to maximize the potential of their water and food rations with the intent of jettisoning their payload and returning home. As their ship the Icarus 2 sails closer to the sun, the once placid crew relations begin to fragment; the loss of telecommunications with Earth intensifies tensions within the claustrophobic surroundings.

Interactions further sour, when a distress signal from the previously missing Icarus 1 emerge outside the sun's exterior. Schisms develop as crew members bicker about responding to the calls, whilst fears arise over the success of the virtually suicidal mission and the safety of the ship. Soon disaster strikes and despite the crew's disconnection from Earth, their basic human emotions are in full-force at the expense of the mission itself.

In its first two-thirds, Boyle's multi-faceted sci-fi film channels earlier "thinking-man's" sci-films such as Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Debates rage as crew members testify their raw feelings about life's necessities and responsibilities. From these philosophical and intellectual actions the value of life and the notion of mankind emerges at the forefront. Human self-interest and a lust for power take over in a situation that requires full-fledged co-operation; democracy itself is abandoned in preference to an intellectual autocracy.

In these segments, Boyle's film is a wonderful meditation on humanity and life: a realistic study that presses greed before selflessness. Together Garland and Boyle, create a dynamic basis for a film, yet it is a narrative that rapidly unhinges by the film's denouement. Rather, than continue with a salubrious study of unconscious destruction, Boyle's film swerves into the cozy confines of the horror film. Despite creating a brilliant framework for a conclusion involving unmitigated psychosis or the over-reliance of technology, Boyle's film chooses to utilize the Alien model of attrition through separation; making the latter-third of Sunshine feel uncomfortably chaotic.

Despite adept performances by an international cast including Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans and Cliff Curtis, Garland's script offers little information beyond improportionate offerings to the character's histories and intentions. With deftly rounded characters, Boyle's film could have continued on a trajectory of continual destruction due to internal human causes, rather than engaging in the myopic and hazy inclusion of external causes. Certainly the former path could have been compatible with Boyle and Garland's interest in the fate of humanity resting on a single shoulder.

Nevertheless in spite of its flaws, Sunshine is an interesting, often beautifully constructed cinematic experience. Alwin H. Kulcher's cinematography is masterful, particularly in his utilization of slow motion and the sharpness of his colour patterns. In a film that relies heavily on darkness and light, Kulcher's cinematography enhances the underlying motifs within Boyle's film of characters who are blinded by the battle between their external responsibilities and internal conflicts. Furthermore through Mark Tildesley's production design, Sunshine is gifted an artificial environment that furthers the mental fissures of characters, yearning for an end to nights plagued by fateful dreams and days spend in cramped working quarters.

Set a mere fifty years in the future, Sunshine is not to be taken necessarily as a realistic study of Earth's impending future. Rather in its socio-political undercurrents, the film is a steady indictment of humanity's inability to co-operate in times of despair. All though the film's latter third engages in genre trivialities, Sunshine is an astutely-paced sci-fi thriller, which appropriately builds suspense and yet manages to espouse philosophical questions that ultimately shape humanity on a daily basis.

* Sunshine is available on DVD through Fox Home Video

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

2007: Juno

Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007) 7/10

In 2002, the UNFPA conducted a study of births amongst women aged 15-19. The results were startling. Among all nations the United States resided in 58th, tied with the island states of the Maldives and Micronesia and the landlocked African republic of Lesotho with 53 of every 1000 recorded births being born by teenage girls.

Maintaining the highest place among western industrialized nations, the United States bore a teenage birth rate higher than some of the world's poorest nations including Kyrgrzstan (33), Tajikistan (25) and Myanmar (24). While the study itself contains flaws in its statistical methodology, such as the failure to recognize cultural and socio-economic factors as well as abortions, the research undertaken by the UNFPA does demonstrate the prolificacy of teenage sexual activity and pregnancy in the United States.

Yet, surprisingly, this subject has been a social taboo for Hollywood cinema. However in 2007, Hollywood produced not one, but two films detailing unplanned pregnancy. The first Judd Apatow's Knocked Up offered a comedic twist on a one-night stand gone awry, the second Jason Reitman's low-budget $2.5 million dollar sophomore effort Juno provided a risible examination of irreverent spunky teenage girl Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) becoming pregnant on her solitary sexual experience with her nerdy (boy)friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera).

Upon realizing she is pregnant, Juno journeys to the local abortion clinic. However, she is persuaded by a combination of a pro-life classmate's pleas, guilt and nerves to have the baby and give it up for adoption to a willing and respectable couple. Whilst scanning the local Pennysaver, Juno and her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) come across Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner). After breaking the news of her pregnancy to her father Mac (J.K Simmons) and stepmother Brenda (Allison Janney), Juno offers to give her baby to the affluent Lorings.

Juno's pregnancy subsequently shapes and effects the lives of the film's central characters. The nervy Paulie distances himself from Juno, despite her love for him; Vanessa's joy at receiving Juno's child is tempered by the teenager's sarcastic personality; and finally Juno fosters a bond with Vanessa's composer husband Mark, who has been forced to closet away his eclectic cultural tastes in order to blend into her conception of bourgeois domesticity.

Unlike Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, Juno offers an intelligent comic reading that purloins its style from some of cinema's more witty and inventive traditions. While Apatow's film interjects "stoner comedy" mannerisms and Animal House hijinks, Reitman's film adapted from first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody's hyper-kinetic script swerves through hefty dollops of alternative chic and screwball comedy. At times one wonders whether Reitman is attempting to replicate the witty postulations of Wes Anderson's Rushmore with its cultural name-dropping and Bohemian spirit: found in its animated credits, its nods to Sonic Youth, Patti Smith and Dario Argento and its utterly annoying indie-pop soundtrack by Kimya Dawson; the latter sounding like an irritating cutesy pastiche of the acoustic-folk offerings routinely shopped by The Shins, Feist and Peter, Bjorn and John.

Despite the catchy, quotable sweetness of Diablo Cody's script, the insular world Reitman elicits from her text feels miasmic and exceptional. The quirky hip language Juno regularly employs, whilst funny, lacks authenticity. Ellen Page's fantastic performance fills the character of Juno with exuberance and vitality, yet her teenage heroine is a sprightly uncommon fixture with her endless wise-cracking wit and hipster vibes. Rather, the character of Juno herself embodies both the strengths and weaknesses of Reitman's film and Cody's script, which feels self-congratulatory in its cleverness and referential capabilities.

From a high school devoid of social fissures to Juno's parents' lenient response to her pregnancy, the film appears to be detached from reality; instead offering an overly optimistic environment were personal happiness and goodness ultimately triumphs and past aberrations are quickly and easily forgotten. Perhaps the only truly genuine space in Juno is the Loring's upper-middle-class home, whose picaresque material perfection disguises their fractured relationship and the social demands that unconsciously shape their lives.

Interestingly, Reitman's film never addresses the external social pressures which may have influenced Juno's decision to lose her virginity to Bleeker. Furthermore by film's end, Juno's pregnancy appears to have had limited negative repercussions, as a sense of normalcy returns to all those involved. The messaged extracted from Juno is ultimately a mixed one. While Juno's pregnancy offers a vehicle for the realization and fostering of personal truths, her spontaneous decision to engage in unprotected sex has little or no drawbacks.

Juno is not forced to quit school or banished from her home; she is not financially stricken or mentally depleted. Her post-pregnancy life is perhaps even more beneficial due to the romantic affections she acquires. The real consequences of unplanned pregnancy are not evident in Juno, nor in Knocked Up. Instead the central protagonists of both films end up engaging in fuller, richer lives. The popularity of both films has demonstrated the general public's interest in the topic, yet it is an attraction connected to the comedic circumstances of the subject matter.

Featuring a strong collective cast including Cera, Bateman and the idiosyncratic Ellen Page, Juno is an easily likable and enjoyable comedy. Running about twenty minutes too long, the film is another unique and sardonic film from Jason Reitman, whose films flavorful lead performances and unorthodox plots tend to compensate for his lack of aesthetic panache.

While Juno easily betters Knocked Up, one wonders how engrossed audiences would be if either film focused on genuine pregnant teenagers from destitute and poorly educated homes, rather than college-educated working women with jobs at E! or pop-culture spouting teenagers from white surburbia?

* Juno is released through Fox Searchlight.

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque