Sunshine
1999
A Collection of Article/Review Exerpts
from Paramount Classics -- official site for Sunshine, about James Frain's character:
Says James Frain: “Gustave is the second child and suffers from jealousy, envy and the feeling of being excluded. He wants to smash things up, turn the world upside down. Ignatz is the favored son, and there’s always an atmosphere of conflict between them. They are rivals in love as well as in politics. Gustave believes passionately in Communism, whereas Ignatz is a fervent supporter of the Emperor. Gustave genuinely believes - like so many of his generation in Europe - that Communism will deliver a better world. It is Gustave’s tragedy to witness the failure of that dream.”
So tell us a bit more about your character in Sunshine.
'He's very passionate and very motivated by wanting to change the world for the better. I think a lot of the film is about accepting the world as it is and that's not something that's easy for him. He joins the fledgling communist party and gets very involved in the revolution and it tears the relationship he has with his brother - which is Ralph.'
You filmed entirely on location in Hungary - how was that?
'Well Istvan is a really great director but also because he's got this great team - he's been working with the same guys for 20 years - they have a way of working together that's very evolved. They weren't the same kind of money pressures and producer pressures that often cause compromises on set so Istvan got to see his vision through his way. It's great to see that there are still directors who work like that.'
Sunshine
Academy Award-winning director Istvan Szabo, ("Mephisto") brings us his next Academy Award winner.
"Sunshine," the story of three generations of a Hungarian-Jewish family, is in the tradition of David Lean's "Dr. Zhivago." It is nothing less than a brilliant historic voyage.
Ralph Fiennes does his best work here, surpassing that of "The English Patient" and "Schindler's List." In the span of three incredible hours, that fly by, Fiennes plays grandfather, father and son of the family Sonnenschein (sunshine in German).
The family's wealth grows on the basis of a secret family recipe for an herbal tonic discovered by the great-grandfather who destroys himself in a vat explosion. Grandfather Emmanuel Sonnenschein builds a famous Hungarian brewery and produces two sons and adopts his dead brother's daughter. She becomes at once the cousin and baby sister of the brothers (Fiennes and James Frain.) She is played by Jennifer Ehle, daughter and look-alike of Rosemary Harris. Ehle, as the daughter who wants nothing more than to be a photographer, fills every dark room in the picture with her light. When she is on screen, the focus on her co-stars fades ever so slightly, the camera loves her so.
"Sunshine" takes us through 150 years of Hungary's turmoil, through the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, World War I and II, the German pact with Hungary, betrayal, occupation and disaster.
Fiennes begins the history as Ignatz, who becomes a brilliant judge, soaring up through the legal establishment and hungry to be accepted by the powers, despite his Jewish faith. James Frain is Gustave, the son "who likes to break things." He becomes a famous anarchist and a Communist leader in the French underground. Frain has the eyes of a passionate Heathcliff. His power and energy fuel the first half of the movie.
Fiennes goes on to portray the next generation's dashing Olympic fencing champion and Hungarian hero who becomes a Roman Catholic and changes his name to further his career and heads the family toward its downfall.
As the last son, Fiennes is Ivan Sors, who watches his famous father die be fore his eyes at the hands of Hungarian Nazis. He becomes a Communist party leader to take revenge on his father's murderers. These concentration camp scenes are barely watchable.
"Sunshine" has all the sweep and power of "Dr. Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia." The cinematography, direction and art direction will surely be the top nominations of next year. Szabo, like Lean, is a masterful director with intense focus on the details that make up his characters' lives. The Jewish holidays, the dinnerware, furnishings and costumes are breathtaking. As an audience, we are lifted from our seats and plunged into history, mesmerized by the performances, music and backgrounds.
No written review or preview can prepare you for the power of this film. It has all the ingredients of a giant classic with treachery, deceit, betrayal, great passion, and historical lightning. Szabo focuses on the faces and mannerisms of each generation of Sonnenscheins with frightening detail. It is a family album come alive with blood and tears on each page. As the years pass by, each face becomes a photograph in silver and gold frames.
With such a collection of brilliant performances, it is almost unfair to say that the great Rosemary Harris, who survives the entire film, carries the movie in her eyes. She grows old with the furniture and paintings, becoming part of the tapestry of the family, surviving one regime after another until her last breath and the words that stop the movie. Harris is monument to acting. "Sunshine" is her ticket to the Oscars.
In "Sunshine," there is a small black book that runs through years like a magic talisman. Watch for it at the very end. It is a "Rosebud" moment. We are all fortunate that in this cloudy summer, "Sunshine" has broken through.
J.P. Devine
Emotions and conflicts, whether they are personal or global, are presented in towering terms. Characters don't just fall in love, they seethe with passion and they embrace new or old ideologies with equal fervor.
The music is rapturous and the cinematography is as sweeping as the story which takes three hours to unfold.
Sunshine follows the trials and tribulations of three generations of a Jewish-Hungarian family named Sonnenschein, or Sunshine, as its members try to adapt to the changing political landscape of their native Hungary.
The film begins at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and takes the Sonnenscheins through the fall of the empire, the rise of fascism and the ensuing Holocaust to the rise and collapse of Communism.
Sunshine is a history lesson, but it's told through emotions and characters that are immediately accessible.
It is the love child of Szabo, the Oscar-winning director of Mephisto and Colonel Redl. He conceived the story, co-wrote it with award-winning playwright Israel Horowitz and then meticulously shot and edited it so that it takes the viewer on a journey as harrowing as it is for the Sonnenscheins.
As vital to its success as its creative and technical achievements is Szabo's casting. The actors inhabit their characters and this is no simple feat for Ralph Fiennes, who plays three generations of sons.
Ignatz (Fiennes), his brother Gustave (James Frain) and their orphaned cousin Valerie (Jennifer Ehle) were born into wealth and privilege. Their father Emmanuel, using an old family recipe, marketed a popular health tonic known as Sunshine.
In order to rise socially, politically and financially, Ignatz, Gustave and Valerie agree to change their name to Sors in order to appear Hungarian rather than Jewish. It is the first of many compromises. Eventually the Sors convert to Catholicism and become willing puppets of first the fascists and then the communists. Each compromise brings glory for some and heartache and tragedy for others.
Fiennes uses facial hair to distinguish son from father and grandfather but that is just simple cosmetics. Far more important and astonishing is the way Fiennes demonstrates what inherited qualities the men share and what new qualities environment has brought them.
Canadian actress Rosemary Harris and her daughter Jennifer Ehle play the older and younger versions of Valerie the independent woman who refuses to have her spirit broken by any person or regime.
There are some genuinely harrowing moments in Sunshine, but they are handled with the greatest of concern for the sensitivities of the viewer. Sunshine is an engrossing experience as it unfolds but its true effect is not fathomed until the viewer replays and rethinks it. This is what makes it an epic in the truest and best sense of the word.
(This film is rated R)
It is a superb period re-creation and boasts a formidable international cast acting in English but does not attain the high artistic level of Szabo's great trilogy exploring the theme of self-deception, "Mephisto, "Colonel Redl" and "Hanussen."
Szabo and his co-writer, playwright Israel Horovitz, tend to match every upheaval in Hungarian life with tempestuous behavior on the part of the Sonnenscheins, particularly the three generations of scions played by Ralph Fiennes. The constant compounding of personal and political turmoil is soap operatic in effect, which makes you feel that "Sunshine" would play best as a TV miniseries. It is nevertheless absorbing and illuminating in regard to the eras its spans but is also pretty wearying by the time it starts winding down. However, those of us who are steadfast admirers of Szabo--and also suckers for traditional-style period epics--wouldn't want to miss it.
"Sunshine," which is English for Sonnenschein, prophetically opens (in 1840) with an explosion in the herbal distillery of a rural tavern-keeper, killing him and his entire family except for his 12-year-old son, Emmanuel. The boy heads for Budapest with his father's secret recipe for his "Sunshine" herbal tonic, which will become the basis for the family fortune that affords the Sonnenscheins a palatial mansion. Their story begins in earnest with the dawn of the 20th century, at which time the sons of Emmanuel (David de Keyser) and Rosa (Miriam Margolyes), Ignatz (Ralph Fiennes) and Gustave (James Frain), have settled on careers in law and medicine, respectively. They have been raised with their orphaned cousin, Valerie (Jennifer Ehle), an aspiring photographer and free spirit who defiantly and successfully seduces Ignatz, whom she marries.
The outbreak of World War I, the deaths of the emperor and his father on the very same day, and Valerie's disillusionment with him ensure an early grave for Ignatz. Hungary goes briefly Communist until taken over by Admiral Horthy's military regime, which ultimately collaborated with the Nazis. With the end of World War II, Hungary would endure Communist rule until 1989.
It is unclear whether in the wake of World War I the Sunshine Tonic is still being manufactured, but in any event the Sonnenscheins continue living in style in the family mansion. Ignatz's son Adam, a dedicated assimilationist and superb fencer, leads Hungary to triumph at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, returning home a national hero and no more willing to see where the country is heading than his late father, Ignatz, was in his time.
Only Adam's sister-in-law Greta (Rachel Weisz) sees that the family needs to emigrate before it's too late. Needless to say, Adam's heroic status will mean nothing once the deportations of Hungarian Jews commence. Valerie (Rosemary Harris, having taken over for Ehle, her real-life daughter) and Adam's son Ivan survive the Holocaust, with Ivan turning Stalinist inquisitor in his mood for vengeance but emerging a hero of the futile 1956 Hungarian uprising. Ivan, too, is seduced--by an aggressive apparatchik (Deborah Kara Unger).
With his clenched intensity, Fiennes is well-cast as a series of single-minded, self-absorbed innocents who are pursued by women rather than pursuing them. The film is anchored by Ehle and Harris, equally luminous as Valerie, who possesses the strength and wisdom of a woman who always dared to be true to herself. Margolyes makes a put-upon, tradition-minded matriarch sympathetic because she can be amusing and common-sensical in her candor.
William Hurt is commanding as a man who survives Auschwitz only to meet a worse fate at the hands of rabid Stalinists, and Rudiger Vogler is an elegant and subtle Hungarian general. (Vogler in middle age recalls Melvyn Douglas at his most urbane, which is a long way from the hippie drifters Vogler played in Wim Wenders' early films.) Lajos Koltai's cinematography is glorious, as usual, and Maurice Jarre is the ideal composer for a stirring epic. Although the lives of the three generations of Sonnenscheins come across as melodramatic rather than tragic, "Sunshine" is a film of many redeeming virtues.
But the three generations that find followings for the emperor, the Nazis, and the Communists are not necessarily the heart of Sunshine. Instead it is all for the woman we watch age as her family dies off. Played in youth by Jennifer Ehle, in old age by Rosemary Harris (Ehle's real life mother), Valerie Sonnenschein is the heart of this story. While each new youth follows the latest regime in power, she can only watch as they again take the road of the misguided man.
The Sonnenschein's are Jewish, migrating to Hungary as a safe haven from their small village. That is all the actions of Emmanuel Sonnenschein (De Keyser), a generation before the film ever starts. Toting the recipe for a tonic that helps him support his family with a factory creating the tonic called "Sunshine" (the meaning of Sonnenschein), Emmanuel makes it into Hungary, not knowing of the political turmoil that would plague his descendants.
Ignatz Sonnenschein (Fiennes) is the son of Emmanuel, a well meaning boy with dreams of growing into the best man for the emperor. His brother Gustav (Frain) is a revolutionary with hopes of overthrowing the emperor soon. For Ignatz, a local justice and wannabe Parliament member, fighting against his emperor is inexcusable. But he cannot completely turn on his brother -- Valerie could never allow him to do such a thing.
Valerie is not allowed to be Ignatz' wife, even though they both love each other. As first cousins and adoptive siblings, their joining is hard to come by but not impossible.
Before World War I, in which Ignatz and Gustav are most evenly in disagreement, the three young Sonnenscheins change their names to a more Hungarian, and therefore less Jewish, Sors. The three Sors embark on the war, where the communist regime succeeds in defeating the emperor, bringing Gustav to higher power than his monarchist brother, only to have to flee the country after the communists are overthrown.
As the country makes way for the fascist rule that comes leading into World War II, Ignatz and Valerie's children are dealing with the growing anti-Semitism in Hungary. The most promising is Adam Sors (Fiennes again) who is such a fine fencer that he is invited to join the Officer's Club. The only problem is that the club does not allow Jews, leading to Adam converting to Catholicism. Meanwhile his steadfast Jewish but understanding brother Istvan (Strong) stands in the background of his famous brother, not knowing that his Adam is being courted by his wife Greta (Weisz).
During this, the rule of the Horthy regime, it is understood that they all must assimilate or face the consequences. It is not until the regime makes way into Nazism at the breakout of World War II that they find that assimilation does not mean a thing in the Holocaust.
As the third part begins, Ivan Sors (guess who, Fiennes) takes on the mission of the recently empowered Communists following the fascist loss of World War II. Ivan joins in with another Holocaust survivor Andor Knorr (Hurt) in hopes of getting justice for the anti-Semitic crimes to his family. Keeping in the fate of his family, Ivan too has a prohibited lover in the form of Major Carole Kovacs (Unger), wife to a major official.
Throughout the various assimilations, affairs, and coups is Valerie, watching with a weary eye. No matter what the downright low the family is at, she is there as support. The performance by Rosemary Harris is one of the best of the year. She takes the rains of the character from Ehle and adds wise age to the character already created.
Playing three roles, Ralph Fiennes once again proves why he is one of the most regarded actors of the last decade. Though he really needs to quit playing the unhappy lover (see Onegin review). Taking each character in a completely different direction from the one played just moments earlier makes this one of his finest performances. It's no Amon Goeth or Charles van Doren, but his three characters could hold up beside most every character Fiennes has ever played.
The art direction and costume design is sumptuous. Like The Red Violin from last year, it is always a treat to see the contrasting looks of various periods in history all in one theatrical sitting. The scene of Adam Sors fencing, though reminiscent of the superlative art direction of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, is a strong high point in sets and interiors.
Sunshine is paced well, a fine treat considering its three hour length. Taking in half a century of Hungarian history, as well as a family's history, cannot be thrown out in a simple length, and each moment of this film feels needed.
István Szabó and longtime cinematographer Lajos Koltai have created an epic in the grand David Lean tradition. Like the still beautiful Doctor Zhivago, Szabó and Koltai make a war story of love and enchantment. A rich and beautiful tale of the terror that came with the isms of history (Monarchism, Fascism, Communism), Sunshine is a large scale and enthralling picture that David Lean would be proud of.
RATING: B+
Copyright © 2000 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
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Epic film shines
Sweeping story told through emotions
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun
Nominated for 14 Genie Awards, Istvan Szabo's Sunshine is a true epic film.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Sunshine
Hungarian Upheaval, Family Entwined in 'Sunshine'
By KEVIN THOMAS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Friday June 9, 2000
With the monumental three-hour "Sunshine," master director Istvan Szabo relates the tragic and turbulent history of Hungary in the 20th century. The story is told through the Sonnenscheins, an assimilated Jewish family whose last survivor finally accepts the futility of trying to deny one's roots--especially when he realizes that that is all he has left. 
Under the rule of Emperor Franz Joseph, Hungarian Jews were granted unprecedented opportunities and civil rights, and the dashing Ignatz rises fast through the ranks of jurisprudence but must change the family name (to Sors, pronounced Sorsh) if he is to go all the way to the top. He's so grateful to the emperor that he refuses to notice that the government is growing ever weaker and more corrupt, with the lower classes left in such dire straits that Gustave becomes a Communist in protest. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunshine, 2000. R, for strong sexuality and for violence, language and nudity. A Paramount Classics release of an Alliance Atlantis and Serendipity Point Films in association with Kinowelt presentation. Director Istvan Szabo. Producers Robert Lantos, Andras Hamori. Executive producers Rainer Kolmel, Jonathan Debin. Screenplay Szabo and Israel Horovitz; based on an original story by Szabo. Cinematographer Lajos Koltai. Editors Michel Arcand, Dominique Fortin. Music Maurice Jarre. Costumes Gyorgyi Szakacs. Production designer Attila F. Kovacs. Art director Zsuzsanna Borvendeg. Key set decorator Tommy Vogel. Running time: 3 hours. Ralph Fiennes as Ignatz, Adam and Ivan. Rosemary Harris as Older Valerie. Jennifer Ehle as Young Valerie. William Hurt as Andor Knorr.
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Sunshine
(Dir: István Szabó, Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rosemary Harris, Jennifer Ehle, James Frain, William Hurt, Molly Parker, Rachel Weisz, Deborah Kara Unger, John Neville, David De Keyser, Miriam Margolyes, Mark Strong, Kathleen Gati, János Némes, Mari Töröcsik, Katja Studt, Balazs Hantos, Jácint Juhász, and Flóra Kádár)
BY: DAVID PERRY
István Szabó created Sunshine with the idea of documenting a world that collided with evils defeating evils, only to be usurped by more evils -- in this case, the wartorn history of Hungary in the twentieth century. Each evil is told through the eyes of whomever the current surviving generation of the Sonnenschein is at that time. With every new wave of government comes a new alliance for that member.
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IMDB link for Sunshine