Sunshine Superman Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Sunshine Superman Blu-ray Movie Review

The Real Bodhi

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 31, 2016

Sunshine Superman is a documentary portrait of Carl Boenish, who invented the extreme sport that came to be known as "BASE jumping". Originally called "fixed object jumping", the pursuit acquired its colorful name from the list of tall, fixed objects from which Boenish and his fellow skydiving enthusiasts flung themselves into free fall: buildings, aerials, spans and earth. Like the character known as "Bodhi" in Point Break (either version), Boenish spent his life chasing high-adrenaline challenges. He invented BASE jumping because skydiving had become too routine. At least in hindight, Boenish's death at age 43 in a failed jump from a treacherous mountain peak has the inevitability of destiny.

But Boenish was also a filmmaker. He worked as the aerial cinematographer on several Hollywood productions, of which the most famous is John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths starring Burt Lancaster and Gene Hackman. He also made and distributed numerous short films in which he attempted to capture the thrill of freefall; several are included in the Blu-ray extras. Repeatedly throughout Sunshine Superman, Boenish's friends and family stress the importance to Carl of capturing his adventures on film. Some say he cared more about the cinematic record than the experiences themselves.

Documentary filmmaker Marah Strauch discovered Boenish's world through an uncle who was a BASE jumper. Combining extensive footage from Boenish's archive, contemporary interviews and historical re-enactments, she has constructed a vivid portrait that captures the daredevil's enthusiasm and provokes the viewer to ponder what drove his extreme pursuits.

Strauch covers Boenish's upbringing in California, where an early battle with polio confined him to a wheelchair for a year (and may have helped inspired his determination never to tolerate limits on his freedom of movement). Initially employed as an electrical engineer, Boenish was transformed when he discovered skydiving, which he pursued with an avid passion. He also began filming his jumps and airborne team acrobatics, which led to employment as an aerial photographer. In 1978, after accumulating fifteen years of skydiving experience, Boenish began experimenting with jumps from the peak known as El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. His search for other suitably tall fixed objects led him to skyscrapers and TV antennas in Houston and Los Angeles. Boenish and fellow enthusiasts coined the name "BASE" to identify themselves as an informal association. To became a "member", one had to complete a jump from each of the four types of fixed objects represented by the name.

An essential companion in Boenish's restless quest was his wife Jean, whom he met while he was still skydiving and quickly married in a storybook case of love at first sight. Jean Boenish is routinely described in the film as Carl's opposite, and her manner in both contemporary interviews and film from their joint adventures bears out the description. Where Carl Boenish speaks in a frantic rush and bounces around like a hyperkinetic puppy, Jean is a still and deliberate presence. But she enthusiastically embraced her husband's passion for free fall, becoming an accomplished skydiver and then joining Carl in his fixed-object experiments. Meanwhile, the news media began to take notice, as did legal authorities. Yosemite eventually banned BASE jumping after its growing popularity attracted too many thrill-seekers to the park. Reactions from the owners of buildings used as jump sites ranged from litigious (notably, Crocker Bank in L.A.) to enthusiastic. In Memphis, Tennessee, the owner of one tall building sought out Carl and Jean Boenish to join the city's annual Cotton Carnival, parachuting into the crowd to crown the king and queen of the festival.

Strauch devotes a significant portion of Sunshine Superman to Boenish's 1984 record-setting jump from "Troll Wall" near the Norwegian town of Åndalsnes for an ABC TV special about the Guiness Book of World Records hosted by David Frost. Captured on film from multiple angles, the jump was the highest known BASE jump at the time, and Strauch covers the preparation, anticipation and execution of this historic feat with a mounting sense of foreboding. Shortly after setting the world's record at Troll Wall, Boenish attempted an even more dangerous jump from a neighboring peak and died in the effort.

Many aspects of Boenish's final, fatal plunge raise provocative questions, including the fact that he attempted it without telling his wife and that, having just achieved a new level of success and notoriety at Troll Wall, Boenish returned to a site that he and his team had previously rejected as unacceptably hazardous. That fact alone may have accounted for Boenish's attempt to conquer the site. As portrayed in Sunshine Superman, Boenish wasn't so much a risk-taker as a limit-breaker. He seems to have been possessed by a boundless confidence in his own ability to achieve the impossible, and his energetic self-assurance, which one interviewee repeatedly calls "a geyser", convinced those around him to believe that Carl could surmount any obstacle. (Strauch has aptly referred to him as a Pied Piper.) Did Boenish think he was indestructible, or had he simply accepted the inevitability of dying in his quest for new challenges? Whichever was the case (and maybe it was both), he was determined to leave a record of his efforts, and Strauch's film honors that ambition.

Sunshine Superman Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The contemporary portions of Sunshine Superman were shot on Red by multiple cinematographers in the U.S. and Norway, but much of the film consists of Boenish's own footage, either shot by him or by crews under his direction. Strauch has said that she wanted a visual design that "embellishes the patina of the 1980s in California and Scandinavia". To that end, she seems to have relied on Boenish's 16mm sources, which vary from adequate to excellent, to set the standard for the look of the digital photography in both re-enactments and interviews.

Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features an expressively colorful image that does full justice to the film's many BASE jumps, which are seen from numerous perspectives. The digital photography provides impressive detail for such disparate landscapes as the peaks and deserts of Yosemite and the Norwegian mountains and fjords, and the digital imagery has been effectively blended with Boenish's photography, which was scanned from the original negative and often yields remarkable detail and sharpness for a 16mm source. Vintage TV broadcasts in standard-definition do not fare as well, but their limitations are inherent to the source. The disparate visual textures have been harmonized by a digital colorist to minimize their differences, resulting in (mostly) seamless transitions between old and new material. (The most obvious difference is the shift in aspect ratio between the 1.85:1 of the film and the 1.33:1 sources from old TV broadcasts.)

Magnolia has encoded Sunshine Superman at an average bitrate of 19.99 Mbps, but the key word is "average". The bitrate spikes upward for the jump sequences and downward for digitally captured interviews. Care has obviously been applied in the compression, so that the film arrives on Blu-ray without adding artifacts or distortion to the source-based anomalies.

Sunshine Superman Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sunshine Superman's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack generally adheres to the documentary norm of front orientation. Voices in the contemporary interviews are clear and intelligible, and voices from historic clips are equally so, but with less tonality and dynamic range. Instead of attempting to pump up Boenish's exploits with sound effects added after the fact, Strauch has used musical selections to highlight her subject's upbeat personality and also as an audio reminder of the period in which he pursued his adventures. Selections from The Hollies, The Byrds, The Kinks and America are prominently featured, with orchestral selections from Wagner interwoven as a spiritual counterpoint. The Donovan song from which the film takes its title plays over the end credits. Incidental scoring was provided by Norwegian documentary composer John Erik Kaada.

Sunshine Superman Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Flying Dreams: The Making of Sunshine Superman (1080p; 1.78:1; 9:42): Director Marah Strauch describes the origin of the film, her visual strategies and her interpretation of Boenish's life. Other interviewees include producer Eric Bruggeman, aerial DP Peter Degerfeldt, co-producer Lars Løge and Jean Boenish.



• Masters of the Sky (A Short Filmpoem by Carl Boenish) (1080p; 1.37:1; 13:54): An edited assortment of sky diving jumps, acrobatics and hijinks, set to a jaunty musical score.



• Sky Dive! (A Short Filmpoem by Carl Boenish) (1080p; 1.78:1; 14: 41): Similar to Masters of the Sky, but with less frenetic cutting and a gentler soundtrack.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.85:1; 2:02).



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun and Noma: My Perfect Storm, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live produces the message "Check back later for updates".

Sunshine Superman Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even with a full-length documentary biography, Carl Boenish remains an elusive character, but the strength of Sunshine Superman is how vividly it presents the man, both as his friends and family recall him and in his own words as his life of adventure unfolded. Boenish's compulsive filming didn't just record the exhilaration of freefall; it also captured the restless spirit that drove him to keep testing limits, no matter the risk. Boenish saw the world from a unique perspective, and if Sunshine Superman cannot explain him (I doubt anyone could), it conveys the restless desire that powered him at top speed through his forty-three years. You may end up shaking your head in disbelief over Boenish's crazy quest, as is certainly the case with several of the film's interviewees, but he's not someone you're likely to forget. Recommended.