Why the movie doesn't work ...

Rating: 6/10 (8 November 2004)

These comments are mainly directed to those who have seen the movie. If you haven't seen it, by all means do. My tag line is a little misleading, because in some ways the movie does work. By co-incidence I've recently viewed both this movie and "The Matrix" for the first time. Both movies use the technique of 'mediated reality', where the main characters lie prone for much of the movie while they are 'fed' a version of reality: a virtual reality in the case of The Matrix, or a dream sequence in the case of this movie. The problem with the use of this technique is that the reality space of the movie risks becoming non-contiguous with that of the viewer - viewers may not be able to relate to what they are seeing. The technique does allow the director a great deal of latitude in the turns the movie will take, and one tends to feel off-balance because everything is so unpredictable. In the case of The Matrix, I became annoyed with the way in which 'Neo's superpowers were simply escalated to get him out of any given situation. (Good eye-candy though). While 'Sunshine' is a much more intellectually interesting movie than The Matrix, I'm still left a little cold. Does this movie relate to anything in my life, or offer any relevant insight into our experience in general? Relevance to our experiecne is not precluded by the use of 'mediated reality' as a technique. The Truman Show, for example, is very relevant to our post-modern experience. But this movie doesn't say much to me, beyond trying to be very clever. Perhaps whatever message is there, needed to be made more explicit. (Or perhaps I'm too old or too thick, take your pick). The final section of the movie, where the leads resume their love affair, offered possibilities, but ended too soon.
Finally, I found the characters themselves to be fairly tawdry and somewhat sleazy, which distanced the movie even further - in my view.