Sunshine (film)
From AwardAnnals
| Film: | Sunshine |
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| Director: | István Szabó |
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| Distributor: | Paramount |
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Although Sunshine was made by a Hungarian, István Szabó, and deals with the history of Hungary as refracted through three generations of a Jewish-Hungarian family, you might be more inclined to give it three hours of your own life if you approach it as a David Lean movie in spirit. It is an English-language picture, and Maurice Jarre’s music recalls his score for Doctor Zhivago. Szabó emulates Lean’s intimate-epic style of merging the sweep of history with the crystalline detailing of individual lives, so that the shape of destiny is glimpsed through personal moments that feel at once evanescent and eternal. His lighting cameraman, Lajos Koltai, is one of the handful of cinematographers equal to capturing these moments in lapidary images—cinematic sunshine of the highest order.
“Sunshine” is a literal translation of Sonnenschein, the family name of the central characters. And “destiny” is one meaning of Sors, the name three Sonnenschein offspring choose for themselves to better assimilate as subjects of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Two are brothers, Ignatz (Ralph Fiennes) and Gustave (James Frain); their sister (by adoption) Valerie (Jennifer Ehle) is really their cousin. Both men love her, and Ignatz rocks the ultratraditional family by taking her as his wife. Nevertheless, the Sonnenscheins and the Sors enter upon the 20th century in loving solidarity, grateful to live under a liberal and tolerant regime. That’s all swept away by the Great War, the rise of Nazism, and its replacement, the new fascism of Stalinist Communism. Valerie survives them all—though she’s played later on by Rosemary Harris, Ehle’s own mother. For his part—or parts—Ralph Fiennes goes on to embody two later generations of Sonnenschein/Sors men, the proudly patriotic Adam and his son, the rudderless Ivan, whose guilt over being a compliant prisoner at Auschwitz leads him to buy into the passionate puritanism of the Stalinist purges. Fiennes rises to the awesome challenge of creating three utterly distinct characters who all share the same congenital weaknesses and aching potential for greatness.
This is a film of considerable beauty and sometimes shattering power. Even three hours is not enough to do justice to all the characters, all the wrenching turnarounds of history and political allegiance and rectitude. But the film is never less than gripping, and as an essay on “family values,” it’s well-nigh definitive. —Richard T. Jameson
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This sprawling family saga follows a Hungarian-Jewish family across three generations, and stars Ralph Fiennes as the father, the son, and the grandson in three distinctly different roles. As a Europudding vehicle for Fiennes and a top-drawer cast (including Jennifer Ehle, Rachel Weisz, Deborah Unger, Miriam Margolyes and William Hurt), Sunshine delivers on all fronts: there’s glossy melodrama, high-moral seriousness as history wears the family down like the wind, and leitmotifs—the family elixir called “Sunshine” that founds their fortune, semi-incestuous adulterous liaisons, photographs and faces—that thread the epic three-hour narrative together. Fiennes begins as a stiff Budapest lawyer-cum-officer and judge during the First World War, torn when anti-Semitism raises its head. His son is a champion fencer who denounces the family faith to attain advancement but ends up in the Nazi-run labour camps all the same. The last in the line, a policeman this time, must navigate the Stalinist forces of repression and endures through the 1956 uprising to take back the family name and faith. And yet as a film by director István Szabó (Colonel Redl, Mephisto), it’s a bit of a soggy disappointment lacking the bile and spit and visual inventiveness that makes the best of his other works so outstanding. Perhaps the fact that Szabó is directing an all-English speaking cast is the problem, leaving the film feeling strangely old-fashioned and paradoxically lacking a sense of place (despite much of it being filmed in Hungary itself). Although there are some charged emotional beats throughout, pretty costumes, and lots of entertainingly tasteful bonking sequences, the fencing sequences in particular become tooth-pullingly tedious and the whole thing seems to drag, especially as it takes itself so seriously. —Leslie Felperin
Barnes and Noble
A tour de force for talented thespian Ralph Fiennes, this sweeping drama directed by Istvan Szabo (Mephisto) is undeniably melancholy, but it’s also passionate and absorbing and all but unforgettable. Sunshine details the misfortunes of the Sonnenscheins, a once-prosperous clan of Hungarian Jews living in Budapest, whose members fall victim to several anti-Semitic regimes during the 20th century. First, respected teacher Ignatz runs afoul of Jew haters in the World War I era; later, his son dies in a Nazi death camp; still later, his grandson escapes persecution by becoming a Communist bureaucrat. Fiennes plays three generations of Sonnenscheins, and with Szabo’s help makes each son a distinctive character. In a clever casting move, Ignatz’s wife, the family matriarch, is played as a young woman by Jennifer Ehle (who in some shots resembles the young Meryl Streep) and as an old woman by Ehle’s mother, Rosemary Harris. William Hurt is very effective as a disgraced Communist, and Rachel Weisz registers strongly as Ignatz’s mistress. Sunshine has a mulitutde of powerful sequences, such as the particularly haunting scene in which Fiennes is frozen to death by his Nazi captors. Szabo’s three-hour epic is not for the faint of heart, but it demonstrates human tenacity and resiliency in a most powerful manner. Ed Hulse
