Sunshine Superman
Just looking at El Capitan from the Yosemite Valley floor makes my brain spin, so you can believe that I admire the superhuman accomplishments of the BASE jumpers documented in “Sunshine Superman.” Equipped with parachutes or wingsuits, these extreme athletes take flying leaps into the void from places like the top of El Capitan ( about 3,000 feet) or the 160th floor of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa ( somewhat shorter).
Of course, this sport is totally unforgiving of mistakes, as the film makes abundantly clear. ( By the way, it’s opening less than two weeks after two BASE jumpers, including the renowned Dean Potter, plunged to their deaths in Yosemite.)
The focus of “Sunshine Superman” is Carl Boenish, a Southern Californian considered the founding father of BASE jumping. ( BASE stands for the categories of platforms the practitioners jump from — buildings, antennae, spans and Earth.) Boenish was also a cinematographer whose compelling short films helped promote the sport.
Numerous archival clips reveal that, as crafty as he was at garnering publicity, Boenish was something of a big kid, delighted by his exploits and rejoicing in tweaking the noses of the establishment. For much of its existence, BASE jumping has been illegal, and practitioners have had frequent brushes with the law, which they don’t seem to consider much of an obstacle.
We can only know Boenish through old footage and the recollections of colleagues and friends because he was killed in 1984 jumping from the Norwegian cliff called the Troll Wall. It was a solo outing attempted a day after he and his wife, Jean, completed a recordsetting double jump nearby, which was filmed for a TV show. Jean Boenish, who is still deeply involved with the sport, gets a lot of camera time.
Director Marah Strauch includes a few re- enactment scenes, which aren’t strictly necessary, but mainly lets the principals — and the eye- popping jump footage — do the talking. It was and is common for jumpers to wear helmet cameras, which makes for plenty of dazzling “first- person” images.
There are also the expected helicopter shots, but nothing else matches one dizzying scene where Boenish climbs out onto a tiny perch — basically an aluminum pole with a bicycle seat at the end — suspended thousands of feet above the Yosemite floor, so he can film the jumpers head on. Yipes!
Some revelations about Boenish’s final jump are abrupt and seem to demand elaboration, which we don’t get. But that’s not a deal breaker. The action shots are intoxicating, as close as most of us will get to feeling the jumpers’ euphoria.