Sunshine could very well be an academy award winner–best picture, best actor, best supporting actor/actress, you name it. The film was a very well-done epic covering more than three generations of a Hungarian Jewish family. The family story within the film is beautifully critiqued at the end of the movie in a letter written by the patriarch of the family, Emmanuelle Sonnenschein (David De Keyser), and read by his great-grandson, Ivan, played by Ralph Fiennes, who also played the role of Ivan's father, Adam, and grandfather, Ignatz. (You may remember Ralph Fiennes for his role as the disfigured Hungarian count/pilot in The English Patient and the sadistic nazi in Schindler's List.)
Sunshine brings the message that no matter who is in power injustices are always done to dissenters, and the elite, controlling parties are always the same in any form of government. Individuals who give misplaced loyalty to any government up and above God are always disappointed and never truly free in the end.
This three-generation epic leads us into World Wars I, II, and beyond and exposes the hatred and persecution of the Jews by the nazis and other fascist-type groups. Depending upon who's making this type of epic film, depicting the persecution of "others" could very well be towards any race or group of people in any country. Unjust and criminal persecution has happened in every era in some part of our world. There are numerous examples from history and currently of stories of individuals and families who have suffered terribly at the hands of those who happen to be in power at the time.People use governments to form laws that make injustice and criminal acts "legal". Unfortunately, many of those who were on the receiving end of unjust persecution become that which they hated and fought against–the greedy, power-hungry, bully who makes laws and sets up procedures to criminally and unjustly persecute others.
Yet, how beautiful life can be, as portrayed by this Jewish family, if governments would just leave the people alone. Governments wrongfully demand loyalty to principles from their subjects and citizens that God never intended. If they are godly principles, then a citizen should "render to Caesar that which is Caesar's" because Caesar (the government) renders to God. No people should continue to be loyal to ungodly principles.
Many families have been separated because religions and governments try to put God in very small boxes of limited human understanding. When this happens, peace can never come to diverse peoples of color and different genetic origins. God is so much bigger than those boxes. True peace cannot come to this planet until we stop calling ourselves "Christians," "Muslims," "Jews," "Buddhists," etc. and begin to call ourselves "brothers" and "sisters"–"ascending sons and daughters of God." Only then can we share the holy temple because the holy temple isn't for any one religion or one race.
Human beings on this planet must get beyond genetic and religious origins or else we will continue to fight religious wars, and families will continue to be separated from their sons and daughters when those sons and daughters begin to discover a bigger God. When people say that their religion does not include God, just their race, they still have sowed the seeds of separation from those in their family who have discovered there is a God.
It's inevitable that in the evolution of a planet into the first stages of light and life, which is the beginning of a millennium of peace and cooperation, all of those old tags of identifying and labeling each other must be thrown away and a new language be developed about God and each other. This is why our local universe Creator Son, Christ Michael, gave Urantia (Earth) the Fifth Epochal Revelation–The URANTIA Book and The Cosmic Family volumes.It's a beginning of a common understanding of God and His Master Universe.
Here on this planet, where we hardly tolerate our differences of race, religion, nationality, ideology, culture, or lifestyle, is the reality of souls from other universes which needs to be understood. The giant leap that we must make in consciousness must be away from the binding dogmatism of evolutionary religions and nationalistic loyalties that separate us as a human race.
Sunshine portrays the character, Valerie–a young Jewish woman (Jennifer Ehle) and later the surviving matriarchal grandmother (Rosemary Harris)–as having true freedom. Her loyalties were not to her traditional Jewish orthodoxy nor to the three governments that she lived under. Her loyalties belonged to something greater than any person or system that demanded her loyalty, including her husband. Her loyalties were to God. In the end it was her grandson who realized it was she who had true freedom.
~Van of Urantia*MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America
