kreemer This movie has haunted me all my life. It is beautifully shot - excellently edited. The acting is nuanced and very serious. Ralph is - clear, and involved, and real.It's a long, long film, reaching out and dragging you in, right inside, long past the amount of time we are used to sitting and listening and watching, well past our barriers of focus and concentration, well beyond our ability to intellectualize this or that... I found myself floating though history, through time - I found myself deeply moved and irrevocably different.This movie has haunted me all my life.

Lee Eisenberg "Sunshine" portrays three generations of the Hungarian-Jewish Sonnenschein family. Specifically, bad things happen to them with every major event (the attempted Communist takeover by Bela Kun, the Nazi invasion, the post-WWII Soviet takeover). Ralph Fiennes plays three generations of men. After watching this movie, you'll probably be very impressed about all of Hungary's various aspects; I certainly was. Every part of the movie is well-done. Fiennes plays all three roles perfectly, and Jennifer Ehle, Rosemary Harris, Rachel Weisz, John Neville, and the other cast members do quite well with their roles. Istvan Szabo directs with the same energy that he brought to "Mephisto" and "Being Julia". Perfect.

noralee During the almost 3 hours of "Sunshine" I had plenty of time to think about how Ralph Fiennes seems to be made to make period pictures unlike say Harvey Keitel and Kevin Costner who were wincible in theirs. Fiennes bares all for penance for his "Schindler's List" character in this lavish look at 3 generations of a Jewish family in Hungary as they try to assimilate vs. never-ending anti-Semitism. Fiennes plays all 3 generations of males in the family as they accommodate with imperialism, fascism and communism-- and gee not once does anyone say "You look so much like your father!", though the all senior citizen audience guffawed by his 3rd appearance. But then they also guffawed that all the repetitive sex is the same through the century, lustful attacks on the sly with much frantic clothes removal, and unflattering camera angles up the nose. Tony-nommed mother and daughter team Jennifer Ehle and Rosemary Harris breathe tremendous life into the movie as the younger and older self of a fulcrum character, which Fiennes did less often because his characters were so repressed. I'm not sure if it was intentional that each of the 3 generations had the same personality so that the viewer tells them apart by their facial hair and costumes (well, when he's wearing clothes).In more ways than one this reminded me of "The Marriage of Maria Braun," a bitingly satirical German film that made similar points with humor on the same theme as "Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss." The script, co-written by the director and Israel Horowitz, I assume the playwright, is too didactic in making its points, but the philosophical decision points it focuses on in history are interesting, trying to identify when and about what people should take a stand or go along.The look is even beyond Merchant/Ivory retro feasts, absolutely beautiful settings, costumes, a visual feast. For example, a scene from the 1936 Olympics mingles newsreel film with ersatz recreated newsreel film and new color scenes as the camera follows the crowds in Nazi uniforms. I stayed through all the credits but the locations weren't identified -- where is that sumptuous Ministry of "Justice"? (originally written 6/25/2000)

[email protected] Schindler's List was apparently enough for most film goers. "Sunshine," superior to "Schindler" in many respects, got fewer accolades and much less attention. Why do I think "Sunshine" is superior to "Schindler?" Primarily because it tells the story of the Holocaust through the lens of a single family whose pre-Holocaust history gives a dimension and depth to the tragedy of that family that "Schlinder" is incapable of providing because of its quite different narrative strategy and focus. To be sure, "Schindler's" narrative sweep affords a greater sense than "Sunshine" of the scope of the slaughter. But "Sunshine" stands in relation to "Schindler" as a novel stands to a work of history. One brings the insights offered by individual tragedies, the other brings more of a societal perspective. The best "Holocaust" film, however, remains in this viewer's opinion, "The Pawnbroker" with Rod Stieger, which had an even narrower focus than "Sunshine" and brought the horror of the Holocaust to life by exploring the emotional desolation/death suffered by a single survivor. A truly great film.