Moon
Directed by Duncan Jones
Runtime: 97 min.
Co-writer/director Duncan Jones’ debut feature Moon is a modest but nonetheless exciting bit of (derivative) speculative fiction. As the film’s vision of the future is obviously cobbled together from a myriad of sources—most importantly 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris—it only really becomes involving after the first half hour has given us sufficient set-up. Although Jones and co-writer Nathan Parker add nothing novel to the mythic canon they’re working in, they do provide a very satisfying bit of genre falderal, albeit one that’s a little too literal-minded.
Moon trains in on the fears associated with loss of personal identity through the lens of a drone-against-the-world story, a la Silent Running. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) works alone in a space station on the far side of the moon mining He3, the alternative energy source that 70 percent of the world runs on. Without any means of direct communication with people back on Earth, Sam’s only human contact is supplied by his faithful robot assistant Gerty (Kevin Spacey's disembodied voice) and video messages sent to and from his wife and various bosses. After almost three years on the station, Sam’s got a bad case of cabin fever, so it's only a matter of time before he starts seeing people that aren’t there. Unfortunately for both him and us, they aren’t all in his head.
That kind of deceptive matter-of-factness is crucial to understanding why Jones’ film works as well as it does, and why it also refuses to go farther in its speculation. Once Sam goes in search of the person he sees stranded in the middle of nowhere, the signs of his mental deterioration take a backseat to the physical toll being exacted while he's in his quest for answers. Scars and wounds matter a great deal in the film, but instead of being used as mirage-like signs of Sam’s mental state, they’re used as just some of the “real,” observable clues that inform us that everything he’s questioning is in fact tangible. The blinking lights on the station that insist that certain functions are offline are not hallucinations—nor are the places and things Sam’s visitor’s conspiracy theory ravings implicate. Nothing is left up to Sam’s imagination, making all the clues we have to go on disappointingly objective.
Take Gerty, for example (watch out for some spoilers ahead): Unlike a HAL 9000, Gerty has facial features projected via a comic yellow smiley face that shifts with its mood. Gerty’s initially reticent to address Sam’s questions but about mid-way through the film, it starts to not only tell him bits and pieces of what he wants to know but it even eventually starts to help him. In fact, when Sam needs to delete Gerty’s hard-drive to make sure that the higher-ups at Lunar don’t catch wind of his actions, we cry for the selfless toaster because he’s making the ultimate sacrifice to prove that he is in fact on Sam’s side.
Gerty’s just a mechanical construct, even if the computer does appear to make selfless human choices. The fact that we can see that its actions are really all in Sam’s interest is immediately satisfying, but ultimately dispiriting. In the same way, the fact that the audience can see “the secret room” and can observe that the mysterious spire that’s all the way out there is in fact blocking simultaneous video broadcasts means that the world Sam’s living in is in fact grounded in reality. That’s all well and good, but when the foundation that that ground is built on is recycled as it is here, something’s amiss, even if everything else in the film feels so damn right.
Directed by Duncan Jones
Runtime: 97 min.
Co-writer/director Duncan Jones’ debut feature Moon is a modest but nonetheless exciting bit of (derivative) speculative fiction. As the film’s vision of the future is obviously cobbled together from a myriad of sources—most importantly 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris—it only really becomes involving after the first half hour has given us sufficient set-up. Although Jones and co-writer Nathan Parker add nothing novel to the mythic canon they’re working in, they do provide a very satisfying bit of genre falderal, albeit one that’s a little too literal-minded.
Moon trains in on the fears associated with loss of personal identity through the lens of a drone-against-the-world story, a la Silent Running. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) works alone in a space station on the far side of the moon mining He3, the alternative energy source that 70 percent of the world runs on. Without any means of direct communication with people back on Earth, Sam’s only human contact is supplied by his faithful robot assistant Gerty (Kevin Spacey's disembodied voice) and video messages sent to and from his wife and various bosses. After almost three years on the station, Sam’s got a bad case of cabin fever, so it's only a matter of time before he starts seeing people that aren’t there. Unfortunately for both him and us, they aren’t all in his head.
That kind of deceptive matter-of-factness is crucial to understanding why Jones’ film works as well as it does, and why it also refuses to go farther in its speculation. Once Sam goes in search of the person he sees stranded in the middle of nowhere, the signs of his mental deterioration take a backseat to the physical toll being exacted while he's in his quest for answers. Scars and wounds matter a great deal in the film, but instead of being used as mirage-like signs of Sam’s mental state, they’re used as just some of the “real,” observable clues that inform us that everything he’s questioning is in fact tangible. The blinking lights on the station that insist that certain functions are offline are not hallucinations—nor are the places and things Sam’s visitor’s conspiracy theory ravings implicate. Nothing is left up to Sam’s imagination, making all the clues we have to go on disappointingly objective.
Take Gerty, for example (watch out for some spoilers ahead): Unlike a HAL 9000, Gerty has facial features projected via a comic yellow smiley face that shifts with its mood. Gerty’s initially reticent to address Sam’s questions but about mid-way through the film, it starts to not only tell him bits and pieces of what he wants to know but it even eventually starts to help him. In fact, when Sam needs to delete Gerty’s hard-drive to make sure that the higher-ups at Lunar don’t catch wind of his actions, we cry for the selfless toaster because he’s making the ultimate sacrifice to prove that he is in fact on Sam’s side.
Gerty’s just a mechanical construct, even if the computer does appear to make selfless human choices. The fact that we can see that its actions are really all in Sam’s interest is immediately satisfying, but ultimately dispiriting. In the same way, the fact that the audience can see “the secret room” and can observe that the mysterious spire that’s all the way out there is in fact blocking simultaneous video broadcasts means that the world Sam’s living in is in fact grounded in reality. That’s all well and good, but when the foundation that that ground is built on is recycled as it is here, something’s amiss, even if everything else in the film feels so damn right.
