'The most elemental process': Sunshine as solar melodrama

Of the various criticisms that have been levelled at Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007), a common complaint is that the film’s narrative descends from the cosmic heights of its setup – the dying sun must be resurrected explosively by a team of intrepid astronauts lest Earth freeze over – to the histrionic depths of its ending, in which the improbable return of a Kurtz-like individual grounds the plot as a struggle of individual wills. For several critics, the third act of the film becomes the locus of the melodramatic, here framed pejoratively as that which chafes against the scientific realism of the film more generally. However, in this paper I argue that melodrama in Sunshine cannot be compartmentalised in this way, but instead functions as a mode, revealing itself subtly in a number of technical and stylistic components that punctuate the emotional ebb and flow of the plot from the outset. While the film’s attempts at astronomical accuracy might seem to suggest its adherence to the reality principle, here I contend that the problem of narrativising the death of the solar star sends it into the orbit of melodrama well before its final sequence.