This is a difficult movie to pitch to you so that you understand how great it is. Essentially the story is about a family recipe for a tonic.
Or it's about a family whose wealth centers around a secret family recipe. The story follows each generation of the family as they struggle through political tides - particularly fascism and communism.
Serendipity Point Films produce this movie - they are the company formed by Robert Lantos. Lantos is the producer behind another fascinating film, eXistenZ which was helmed by Canadian director, David Cronenberg.
Sunshine is a lavish production, epic in scale and yet sentimental and intimate, evoking terrible and wonderful emotions with the power of performance in response to conflicts spread throughout the story.
The three different personalities whom Ralph Fiennes plays, Ignatz and his son Adam and his son Ivan. He plays them expertly and they do feel as unique and separate characters.
Will Hurt as Andor Knorr also provides a strong performance. However, it is the women that really drive the men and this story towards each climax. Valerie Sonnenschein (Jennifer Ehle), Greta (Rachel Weisz), and Major Carole Kovacs (Deborah Unger.)
Perfect romantic subjects and complete characters. Youthful, energetic, full of quirks, wisdom and talents/flaws. Their passion and intensity bring our leading men to their knees. At times the women are greater motives than mere survival.
The adopted sister Valerie is a gifted photographer. Ignatz is our first protagonist. They have an affair which makes Gustav (their brother) jealous. He exposes them to mother and father. Ignatz is forbidden to continue the relationship, but he is in love. They are technically not siblings, only cousins.
She can be a bitch with cruel words, but out of love and desperation. Such things are said only when passion is so great, life is made of feelings such as this.
The pressures of moving forward, ascension and the governing organisations versus the family, the heart and the faith. It is the time for love and laughing. The calm before the storm.
The pressures of a marriage, a career, a family with strong roots in faith and culture. And a sense of justice and doing the right thing which Ignatz's superiors are pressuring him to sweep under the carpet.
Then the birth of the first son (the next generation) Istvan (Mark Strong) and months later his brother Adam (Fiennes again.)
This is an intricate portrait of life over time. A legacy of life lessons passed down one generation after the other. Perhaps proving once and for all how we as a people learn nothing from our mistakes.
The first stage of fascism is bullying, then conversion. Dictating assimilation and resenting those who they have assimilated. With the carrot and the stick. The second stage is to isolate and alienate. And humiliate those who have been chosen as the underclass.
The final stage is the Nazi boots knocking down your door. The scenes about the Nazis in this film, followed soon enough by the attack of an aggressively ignorant Communism, are the most powerful scenes out of any movie about the final solution.
Adam Sors becomes a fencing champion but faces corruption of the sport when the referee gives the match to his opposition, an officer (in the officer's club.) Adam clearly won the match and all who watch know this. To join the officer's club he must convert to Christianity. Even then he will still be viewed as just another Jew.
The elder Valerie (Rosemary Harris) watches as life seems to repeat its lessons on the next generation. The love affairs are the foreground for a backdrop of political conflict. A film about the trials of the heart. What you love, whom you fill with passion, how your heart will break. And what we can destroy to conquer you and leave you without a heart, without a soul.
5 stars
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