Moon 2009 ★★★★½
Adapted from a story by Duncan Jones and directed by him, Moon is the directorial debut of the man known to most as Zowie Bowie. Moving away from his famous father’s name, presumably to make his own and not be accused of riding on coat tails, he wrote the screenplay specifically for Sam Rockwell to play the lead as they had previously tried to collaborate but couldn’t agree. After some negotiations and the finished screenplay being written by Nathan Parker, Rockwell signed on the dotted line.
Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut alone on the moon keeping an eye on the four harvesters which patrol the surface collecting helium 3, which now, cleanly and efficiently, provides most of Earth’s power. Bell has to monitor the machines and collect the full canisters and send them on to Earth. To help keep him sane and run the base, he has Gerty, an AI computer system that is there to monitor the base and serve Sam’s interests.
With the live communication feed to Earth down, Sam must rely on delayed messages that he sends to his wife and child, and receives back, along with other things like recordings of football games. The company are also monitoring him and send their own missives to make sure that he’s alright and the operation is running smoothly. However, after spending nearly three years alone on the base and nearing the end of his contract, Sam’s sanity is stretching to breaking point and he begins having visions of his daughter. One of these occurs when he is approaching one of the giant harvesters and results in an accident.
Waking up in the infirmary, he is told by Gerty that he is alright but may have suffered some slight brain damage which could explain his memory loss. Keen to find out what happened and how he got back, he tricks the computer into lifting the lockdown placed on the base by his superiors and let him out to inspect non-existent exterior damage. Travelling to the crashed vehicle Bell makes a strange discovery, a man who looks exactly like him, and this has far reaching consequences for both of them.
I heard good things about Moon before I saw it at the cinema, in a small independent arthouse theatre, as it wasn’t shown in the multiplexes near me and was very impressed by what I saw. My opinion hasn’t changed after watching it at home as it is an intelligent and thought-provoking science fiction film with echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Outland and Silent Running. Jones pays homage to all the films and directors that have inspired him, though you need to look carefully for most of them.
As independent films go, this is excellent and when you consider that it is a debut work and was made for only $5 million (compared to Sunshine which had a $50 million budget), it makes it even more of an achievement. Gathering a good cast, led by Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey (who voices Gerty), Jones has made a very impressive film that improves with repeated viewings. Rockwell’s performance is quite extraordinary, quite possibly the best of his career, and Spacey’s voice is perfectly suited to a monotone computer who you’re never quite sure if it is benign or malign. Moon was one of the best British films of 2009 and amongst the best sci-fi movies of this century.
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