Moon

By Sean Burns
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jun. 30, 2009

There’s a marvelous sense of isolation in director Duncan Jones’ haunting debut feature, a respect for silences that’s a throwback to those more thoughtful science fiction films of the ’60s and ’70s, before everything became about laser battles and blowing shit up.

Sam Rockwell stars in what’s basically a one-man-show as Sam Bell, the sole inhabitant of a lunar outpost mining an energy source called Helium-3. It’s the final frontier seen as dreary blue-collar drudgery—Sam’s more of a maintenance man than an astronaut. His only companion is a clunky computer named GERTY, voiced by a very droll Kevin Spacey, whose silky HAL-9000 line readings emerge from a low-tech display screen flashing smiley-face emoticons.

Sam’s nearing the end of his three-year contract on the moon, and he’s starting to crack up a little bit. His attention’s wandering, his health deteriorating, and after a hairy accident in a surface rover, Sam’s suddenly got company in the outpost—a slightly younger, more pissed-off version of himself. Has Sam finally lost his mind? Well, at least there’s finally somebody to talk to, right?

Chock-full of homages to 2001, Silent Running, Blade Runner and the original Alien, Moon gets away with perhaps too many blatant quotations by asserting it’s own funky, low-key personality, and undercutting audience expectations. I must tread lightly here to avoid spoilers, but Jones seems to have a knack for guessing when we’re a step or two ahead of Sam, so he shrewdly downplays some of the script’s more shattering revelations. There’s a matter-of-factness to his approach that’s entirely unexpected yet weirdly in keeping with the picture’s cold, aloof setting and his classical, still frames.

Rockwell’s the kind of loose-cannon character actor who’s often capable of greatness (as when he played Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) but sometimes flies too far off the reservation (the less said about The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the better.) He hits just the right note here, full of scruffy humanity and easy humor, while clearly differentiating between these two Sam Bells—no an easy feat when you’re playing with yourself. Wait, that doesn’t sound right, does it?

Jones, formerly known as Zowie Bowie (yeah, I’d probably have changed my name too) keeps the scale refreshingly small and allows Moon’s more heady philosophical questions to emerge casually from within. He also gets bonus points for not using his dad’s “Space Oddity” on the soundtrack, though you might be humming it to yourself on the way out. B+

Add to favoritesAdd to Favorites PrintPrint Send to friendSend to Friend

COMMENTS

ADD COMMENT

Rate:
(HTML and URLs prohibited)
User Guidelines