sunshine film

At first the film "Sunshine" seemed way to dark and pessimistic for my liking. I'm sure others felt the same. But the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated a few of the Buddhist-related themes in the film, such as mindfulness.

(Spoiler Alert)

In the film, a crew of several scientists are
hurtling towards the sun on a suicide mission to save the Earth by putting a nuclear bomb in the dying sun to re-ignite it. It wasn't supposed to be a suicide mission, but it is now. They know they will not survive, they will not come back. The best they can hope for is that they will complete their mission before they die, and even that will be very difficult.

You might already be familiar with the Buddhist story of The Strawberry. A monk is traveling through the forest, and comes upon a tiger. He turns and runs. Coming to a cliff, he grabs some vines and climbs over the side. While hanging on the side, with the tiger above, he sees another tiger at the bottom, waiting for him. Two mice emerge from a hole and begin to nibble on the vine he is hanging on. The monk sees a strawberry plant growing near him. He picks one, and eats it, and it is the most wonderful thing he has ever tasted.

This story is basically the premise of "Sunshine", except the main characters in the film are in space and dealing with different challenges (mechanical failures, human mistakes, sabotage, etc). In the end of the film, they have flown their ship into the sun and detonated their bomb. One character stares with scientific wonder at the beauty of the explosion as it grows and engulfs him.