DIRECTOR’S NOTES - Jonathan Brough
“No Ordinary Sun is a film about loss and longing, set within the framework of an extreme event in an extreme landscape. Making the film was a long process, in many ways. First of all, I read a short story called Speed of Light, by American author Pat Rushin, about 10 years ago and thought at the time it would make a great plot for a film.
I was attracted to the idea of an event so huge and far reaching that the only reaction possible was introspection, rather than panic and fear. I also liked the way that the story had the mundane and domestic sitting quite comfortably side by side with earth-shattering events, as often happens in real life.
But I couldn’t come up with an appropriate ending for a cinematic adaptation of the story and so the idea was filed away for several years, until I had the idea of setting a film in Antarctica. The two ideas merged, and No Ordinary Sun was written.
Then there was the problem of getting to Antarctica to shoot - not an easy task at the best of times. Unexpectedly, through a series of coincidences, I was able to hitch a ride to Ross Island in Antarctica aboard the ship Sir Hubert Wilkins and shoot the exteriors in 2001. The rest of the film was completed the following year in Auckland.
In No Ordinary Sun I have tried to enhance the metaphor of the story - the universal physical constant of the speed of light inexplicably changing mirroring the changes in the lone scientist’s life - with a visual style that works in cumulative layers rather than in linear events.
In this way, I hope the film takes the viewer on a journey into the thoughts and memories of the scientist, which means the film’s enigmatic ending is whatever each viewer makes it out to be -dream, memory or reality.”
