from CNN Online
7/3/00
by Paul Tatara
It's no simple thing to make a coherent film that spans half a century and consists of endlessly interweaving romantic and sociopolitical subtexts. Director Istvan Szabo's Sunshine is thick with information, and he manages the daunting task of conveying it with only a handful of miscues. Szabo's script (which he co-wrote with the award-winning playwright Israel Horowitz) often relies on dense narration and bits of documentary footage to convey traumatic worldwide events. World War I, for instance, receives about four minutes of screen time. He's more interested in the lingering toll that harrowing nationalistic deeds have on the human soul, and Szabo's enlisted the ideal actor to help him pull it off.
Ralph Fiennes -- who plays three different members in successive generations of a Hungarian family, each the inheritor of the previous character's spiritual troubles -- is a handsome, endlessly intelligent performer. Fiennes' steadfast intensity is just what this picture needs; his determined gaze suggests a man who's forever dragging the weight of family expectations (dashed and otherwise) behind him.
The effect is that of watching a single spirit pass through a series of look-alike descendants, not all of whom carry it with complete grace. But Sunshine's central message is that grace can often find itself trampled under the heels of prejudice and warfare, regardless of the better intentions of the person who wields it.
Three generations
The film is split into three, hour-long segments, but the story moves with surprising ease. In the first hour, Fiennes plays Ignatz Sonnenschein (translated as "Sunshine"), a brilliant young lawyer who becomes a judge, much to the prideful delight of his elderly father. The Sonnenschein family has grown wealthy courtesy of an elixir that Ignatz's grandfather invented, and the secret recipe is a red herring that carries the story from one generation to the next.
Ignatz's legislative superiors soon ask him to change his name to something "less Jewish." He chooses Sors as a surname, and the family's sense of identity fades over the ensuing years, usually due to government-enforced anti-Semitism.
Much to his parents' dismay, Ignatz also falls in love with and marries his adopted sister, Valerie (Jennifer Ehle, who greatly resembles the young Meryl Streep, both physically and in terms of her lovely performance). World War I eventually alters the happy couple's relationship, to a tragic degree. Their emotional disintegration is difficult to watch.
Proud family humbled
The second segment follows Ignatz's son, Adam (Fiennes, again), as he becomes a world fencing champion. The Sonnenscheins have a tendency to fall in love with the wrong people, so Adam's affair with his brother's wife (played by the beautiful Rachel Weizs) is less than a surprise and a little bit redundant.
Adam's fencing triumph takes place at the Nazi-led 1936 Olympics, so you can sense that trouble is at hand. Hitler's politics of evil soon crush the considerable accomplishments of the Sonnenschein family. The scene where Adam meets his fate, courtesy of a cruel concentration camp guard, is truly unforgettable. Szabo underscores the pitiful malevolence of anti-Semitism by filming this great man's death as if it's just another link in a long, unspeakable chain of brutality.
There's also a remarkable moment in which the entire Sonnenschein family gathers around the radio to hear a Nazi checklist of citizens who aren't considered Jewish by the regime. These proud people, who have already converted to Christianity in an attempt to blend in with the crowd, are forced to pray that their heritage will be ignored in order that they may survive. This is a profoundly sad and subtly terrifying moment, the most moving sequence to hit our screens this year. It's a brilliant piece of multilayered screenwriting.
Chasing fascists, fleeing guilt
The final segment is perhaps the least interesting, though it contains moments of undeniable power. Fiennes now plays Adam's son, who stood by and watched while his father was murdered at the camp. Guilt, stemming from his inaction, has driven the son to become a hunter of fleeing fascists, but his alignment with Stalin's secret police pushes him into activities that aren't far removed from those of his father's murderers.
There's a rather pointless (and pointlessly illustrative) sexual relationship with a soldier played by Debra Kara Unger. But the best scenes in the final hour focus on Fiennes' forced interrogation of his former boss, who's played by William Hurt. Hurt's features have come to resemble drying concrete in recent years, but here he gives a performance that's worthy of a supporting actor nomination.
Fiennes is hardly the only performer on hand, though it may seem that way in a cursory synopsis. Rosemary Harris (Jennifer Ehle's real-life mother) plays Valerie in her later years, and she effortlessly conveys the character's life-affirming nature. David De Keyser is also memorable as Ignatz's staunchly traditional, deservedly paranoid father. Szabo occasionally forces some across-the-ages symbolism, as when a tea cup falls and breaks in different time frames. But he's made a graceful, intense film that deserves to be remembered come Oscar time. It should appeal to anybody with a sense of humanity while serving as a potent reminder of distinctively Jewish struggles.
Even with some flaws, this is easily one of the best films of the year. "Sunshine" contains a little bit of profanity, but it also has scenes of awful brutality, including the graphic rape of a wife by her husband. The equally explicit sex scenes between Fiennes and Unger are an odd inclusion. A small bit of humor would have helped, but Fiennes, as great as he always is, seems wholly incapable of it. Rated R. 180 minutes.
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