Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7403 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-02-19
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 173 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
This sprawling family saga follows a Hungarian-Jewish family across three generations, and stars Ralph Fiennes as the father, the son, and the grandson in three distinctly different roles. As a Europudding vehicle for Fiennes and a top-drawer cast (including Jennifer Ehle, Rachel Weisz, Deborah Unger, Miriam Margolyes and William Hurt), Sunshine delivers on all fronts: there's glossy melodrama, high-moral seriousness as history wears the family down like the wind, and leitmotifs--the family elixir called "Sunshine" that founds their fortune, semi-incestuous adulterous liaisons, photographs and faces--that thread the epic three-hour narrative together. Fiennes begins as a stiff Budapest lawyer-cum-officer and judge during the First World War, torn when anti-Semitism raises its head. His son is a champion fencer who denounces the family faith to attain advancement but ends up in the Nazi-run labour camps all the same. The last in the line, a policeman this time, must navigate the Stalinist forces of repression and endures through the 1956 uprising to take back the family name and faith. And yet as a film by director István Szabó (Colonel Redl, Mephisto), it's a bit of a soggy disappointment lacking the bile and spit and visual inventiveness that makes the best of his other works so outstanding. Perhaps the fact that Szabó is directing an all-English speaking cast is the problem, leaving the film feeling strangely old-fashioned and paradoxically lacking a sense of place (despite much of it being filmed in Hungary itself). Although there are some charged emotional beats throughout, pretty costumes, and lots of entertainingly tasteful bonking sequences, the fencing sequences in particular become tooth-pullingly tedious and the whole thing seems to drag, especially as it takes itself so seriously. --Leslie Felperin

Special Features
2.35 Wide Screen
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Cast And Crew Interviews
Trailer

Synopsis
Director Istvan Szabo's SUNSHINE is an epic tale that follows the Hungarian Jewish family the Sonnenscheins through five generations spanning more than 100 years, from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, exploring the history, politics, world wars, social diaspora, and economic shifts that influence and change them during that period.
Beginning with Emmanuel Sonnenschein, who builds a business around the family product (a Taste of Sunshine tonic), the film follows the lineage from his son Ignaz (Ralph Fiennes), a political conservative loyal to the Hungarian Republic, to Ignaz's son Adam (also played by Fiennes), an olympic fencer who is victimized by the Nazi genocide, to Adam's son Ivan (Fiennes again), a member of the Hungarian communist regime who manages to divorce himself from it and be free. Through these transitions, it is Valerie (played by both Jennifer Ehle and her real-life mother, Rosemary Harris), the cousin and wife of Ignaz, who becomes mother to Adam and grandmother to Ivan, supplying moral support, a family backbone, and photographs: a signature snapshot technique is used in the film to round out each major chapter or event. A beautiful film with easy transitions, dramatic scenery and costumes, and admirable performances, SUNSHINE's themes of family, history, and Hungarian pride resonate far beyond the big screen.

Customer Reviews

A brilliant, touching movie!
This movie is simply brilliant!

It tells the story of a Hungarian Jewish family through 3 generations. We get to see the history of the 20th century, the 2nd world war, how it aaffected Hungary through a family's life. And though everything changes around the Sonnenschein (later Sors) family: regimes, friends, people they can trust, etc... there is still a constancy: the bloodline, the relations, the family bond, the love.

It is such a moving an overwhelming movie, simply brilliant.

The cast is excellent! From Jennifer Ehle to Rachel Weisz, everybody is perfect! And for Ralph Fiennes who plays the 3 main characters (the grandfather, the father and the son), I can't find the words. He plays them so masterfully, that despite the physical ressemblance, you can see that they are 3 totally different persons.

Yes, of course it is dark because it deals with deportation, Jewish camps, but it is that kind of film that after seeing it, you will be thinking about it for days. I have first seen it when I was 14, and ever since it has been one of my favorite movies, not only because the acting is excellent, or the photography breathtaking, but because it gives a whole round story with such emotional depth and moral lessons that the catharsis is guaranteed.

A wonderful movie, you absolutely have to check out if you haven't seen it yet!

epic sunshine
this film is a rather long but very fine portrayal of a hungarian jewish family whose fate is constantly altered over the generations by the political swings in their country. wether it's the communists or the facists in power, someone in the family is supporting the wrong team. fiennes is superb in this film and it's a good thing as really is at the heart of this story as he plays several members of this family whose attempts to assimilate affect their future generation more than they consider. don't be put off, this is not a film of doom and gloom, it's rather subtle and raises interressting questions about nationalism and loyalty, tradition and another dissfuntional family

amazingly insightful
I've seen Ralph is some pretty damm good films ( and some pretty terrible ones i.e Wuthering Heights), but this one is him at his best. Fans of his work or just his looks should get this one.

However, I am belittling this movie by just talking about Ralph Fiennes. It is stunning to look at; transporting you to a world of both beauty and cruelty. The director captures the sense of turmoil within a nation ( the Austro-hunguarian empire ) and the conflict that the political instability presents to a wealthly Jewish family. The film's almost encyclopeadic approach to the three regimes within the time frame echoes a simple, yet valuable message to the three generations of that family ( who are all played by Fiennes ) and that it is to be true to ones self, even in times of adversty. Sunshine to conclude is a breathing taking and breathe stopping film that's relevant today as it was then.