Review of Sunshine

Introduction

Sunshine follows the story of the Jewish Sonnenschein (the Sunshine of the title) family in Hungary across three generations during the Twentieth Century. Ralph Fiennes plays the part of grandfather, father and son as the generations progress. The Sonnenschein family comes from fairly poor beginnings and the men (Fiennes) rise to various positions of power - chancellor to the Emperor of Hungary, Olympic fencing champion, etc.

Video

As a FilmFour co-production, it is unlikely that this had a massive budget to work with but the video quality is still disappointing. In its favour is a 16:9 Anamorphic Transfer. Everything else is a let down. Colour purity is particularly bad with various spurious colours leaking through, especially in flesh tones. This becomes really obvious when you pause the image; faces become a mass of green, red and blue. Otherwise the image is generally grainy and soft and is constantly plagued by sparkles on dark areas.

Not good.

Audio

The DD 5.1 audio is adequate without ever being anything more. Rear channels are used to some extent but the film is mainly dialogue driven.

The music by Maurice Jarre is adequate but rarely rises out of the background to grab your attention

Features

Features are sparse. You get a few interviews with the cast which are OK, but ... There is little to grab your attention and the cast, especially Fiennes, never get enthusiastic about the film.

Conclusion

I wasn’t particularly impressed by Sunshine. It tried to be an epic 20th Century story, letting the lives of a Hungarian family reflect the evolution of Hungary itself. But it doesn’t really come off. In fairness to the film, it is ambitious and tries to function on a number of levels – family story, history of the 20th century, philosophical musings on the nature of power, etc. But, I don’t think it hangs together particularly well. Fiennes is good in his 3 roles but none of his characters is particularly sympathetic. The portrayal of women in the film is not favourable, they are essentially sex objects.

One of the films main points is that, when you get down to it, people and circumstance never really change all that much and that one dictatorship (be it Fascist or Communist) is pretty much the same as another. This is done on one level be having the lives of the 3 Sonnenschein be ultimately rather similar. Over 3 hours, this brings a certain sameness to the affair and you get the feeling that the point was made after the second Sonnenschein. Of course, the writer is reinforcing his point but maybe 2 hours would be more palatable than 3.

I can’t say that I found this particularly interesting. My wife, on the other hand, quite enjoyed it – Ralph Fiennes is good and if you’re a fan it is worth a watch. And for the women, there is a Fiennes full frontal, although I should warn you he is being tortured at the time.

You might get something from it. You’ll need stamina though.