DIRECTED BY: Duncan Jones
FEATURING: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
PLOT: Sam, two weeks away from finishing a lonely three year contract on a one man lunar mining base, finds to his shock that he’s not alone on the moon—and the identity of his new companion leads him to investigate the true nature of his assignment.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: I had high hopes of this turning weird, especially due to the guarded plot synopses that implied there might be some sort of lunatic psychological thriller angle to the film. Unfortunately, although Moon threatens to veer off reality road and foray into the weird wilderness a few times in the early going, it soon straightens its course and plays as a straightforward work of speculative fiction. Still, as a very well-made film with some unusual sights and an unusually thoughtful tone, it’s worth the trip to Moon for anyone seeking something off Hollywood’s well-beaten path.
COMMENTS: Moon starts out as a mystery: something is “off” about the lunar base, and specifically about Sam’s role in the mission. But the mystery is answered early on, and from that point out the film plays as a drama, milking Sam’s situation (a situation that is unique in the history of mankind) of every implication it can think of. From Sam’s loneliness and increasing anger, desperation, and finally resignation, the film generates a genuine pathos. The shift from mystery to drama is accomplished seamlessly, because Moon‘s the unifying principle isn’t really its plot, but its exploration of ideas about what the future may look like, what ethical challenges and basic lifestyle changes future technologies may bring us. First time director Jones confesses to being inspired by, and borrowing from, “hard” science fiction films like Outland and Silent Running, but Moon inevitably evokes the granddaddy of them all—2001—more than anything (especially since the base’s intelligent computer, Gerty, is basically HAL updated with emoticons). Jones doesn’t shy from the inevitable comparison, but embraces it and uses it to the story’s advantage. Sam Rockwell’s performance, which requires him to be onscreen for nearly every shot, could be a career defining moment, craftwise. The plot is intricate, requiring the viewer to pay closer attention than they may be accustomed to, but the tale is told well, and despite a few curve balls it’s not as confusing as it might have been. Special effects are minimal, but the lunar landscapes exhibit all the eerie alien beauty one would hope for.
Despite its overall intelligence, Moon is far from airtight. Some of the technologies used in the film seem more like plot devices than rational scientific solutions to problems faced by future humans. Objections arise that could have been fully addressed in a novel or long story, but in a ninety minute movie, the audience will have to do some work on their own to fill in the gaps, or simply agree to suspend disbelief. But, in an era when science’s role in science fiction is increasingly relegated to the production of rayguns and killer robots, Moon‘s serious speculation about the world of the rapidly approaching future is a breath of fresh oxygen.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: