Moon
Directed by Duncan Jones
Sony Pictures Classics, 2009
By Sean Kelly
I’m going out on a limb here, but Moon was probably one of the finest science fiction films I’ve seen in years, and even though we are only halfway through 2009, it’ll probably end up being one of my top films of the year.
While I think it obligatory to mention that director Duncan Jones is David Bowie’s son, I will not waste any time trying to compare the film to Bowie’s song, “Space Oddity”.
In the near future, the moon is used to mine Helium-3, a key element to solving Earth’s energy crisis. The entire operation is overlooked by a single crew member, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), under the guidance of the on-ship computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey).
Sam lives a lonely existence, and in between checking the harvesters he goes through a routine of running on the treadmill, building a model town, watching old TV shows, and sending messages back home. He is two weeks away from the end of his three year term and is looking forward to going home to his wife and daughter.
For the first part of the film you really get a sense of Sam’s isolation, since — other than GERTY — there is nobody around except for the odd video message. GERTY will obviously be compared to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, the use of cute little smiley faces on his monitor really helps GERTY convey emotion much more than a single red eye ever could.
The plot gets underway when Sam’s moon rover crashes and he suddenly finds himself awake in the infirmary. When he later returns to the rover, he finds that “he” is still inside. I will not elaborate any further on his discovery except to say that for the remainder of the film, Sam Rockwell is his own main co-star.
Rockwell portrays each Sam as two different personalities. The “original” Sam is suffering from the effects of cabin fever and is more content to stick to the status quo, especially since he still believes he is going home soon. The “other” Sam, on the other hand, is more alert to his surroundings and is hell-bent on finding out exactly why there are two of them. Rockwell does really well in this double role and that’s crucial, since for the bulk of the film, they are the only ones on screen. Even GERTY becomes less prominent when the second Sam is introduced. The separate performances are so good, that you really get a sense that these are two very different individuals.
Over the course the film, focus becomes less about why there are two Sams (any guess you make would probably be correct), to what is really going on at the moon base. The two Sams must co-operate to uncover the entire picture.
To conclude, I have to say that the success of this film really relies on Sam Rockwell’s performance and I believe he knocked it out of the park. The last science fiction film I really liked was Danny Boyle’s Sunshine from 2007, and this film surpassed that in many ways. Moon was a great debut for Duncan Jones and I will definitely be interested in seeing what’s next for the son of Bowie.
