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Alex
Garland's Introduction to the SUNSHINE Script Book
I
include it here because in it Alex explains in his own words
what writing the movie meant to him. Even though I don't agree
with his worldview, I think the essay itself is very beautiful,
and I definitely factor his intentions into my appreciation of
the movie.
One my
biggest reasons for loving Sunshine is because I believe it is
an extraordinarily multi-faceted film that can be interpreted in
many, many different ways. I see these different perspectives on
the film as reflective of the diverse reality we live in and,
going by the last paragraph, it would seem that Alex Garland
agrees.
So here
it is, straight from the Sunshine
Script, no copyright infringement is intended: |
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"Sunshine
was created out of a love of science, and of science fiction. In
the same way that 28 Days Later attempted to look back
towards older post-apocalyptic stories, such as Dawn of the
Dead and Day of the Triffids, Sunshine looked
back to films such as 2001, Alien, Dark Star
and the original Solaris. This was slow-paced,
outer-space science fiction. Hallucinatory sci fi about star
travel and feeling claustrophobic while gazing into the void. A
sub-genre, linked by a common theme: that what man finds in deep
space is his unconscious.
Aside
from being a love letter to its antecedents, I wrote Sunshine
as a film about atheism. A crew is en route to a God-like
entity: the Sun. The Sun is larger and more powerful than we can
imagine. The Sun gave us life, and can take it away. It is
nurturing, in that it provides the means of our survival, but
also terrifying and hostile, in that it will blind us if we look
directly upon it, and its surface is as lethal to man as an
environment can get.
As the
crew travel nearer to the Sun, the majesty of the burning star
fries their minds. The crew are hypnotized by it, or baffled by
it, or driven mad by it. Ultimately, even the most rational crew
member is overwhelmed by his sense of wonder and, as he falls
into the star, he believes he is touching the face of God.
But he
isn't. The Sun is God-like, but not God. Not a conscious being.
Not a divine architect. And the crew member is only doing what
man has always done: making an awestruck category error when
confronted with our small place within the vast and neutral
scheme of things.
The
director, Danny Boyle, who is not atheistic in the way that I
am, felt differently. He believed that the crew actually were
meeting God. I didn't see this as a major problem, because the
difference in our approach wasn't in conflict with the way in
which the story would be told. The two interpretation that could
be made from the narrative were the same two interpretations
that could be made from the world around us. In that respect,
perhaps the difference was even appropriate." |