MOON

SONY 

RELEASED 17 July 2009

Duncan Jones is a bright young new British director who has made both a wonderful homage to 70’s and 80’s movies like ‘Alien’, ‘Silent Running’, and ‘Outland’, and also a intriguing, original sci-fi story, which is no mean feat in this age of remakes, reboots, and re-hashs.

Sometime in the near future, man (or should that be ‘a’ man) is harvesting the moon for a substance called Helium-3, which supplies more than seventy percent of the Earth’s total energy needs. Only one man is on the moon keeping everything ticking over. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) has a three-year contract, and we see Sam jogging, feeding his plants (and talking to them), and meticulously building a miniature wooden town. His moonbase ‘Sarang’ has a faulty satellite, so Sam can only send and receive taped messages to his wife Tess and young daughter Eve. Sam does have the base computer GERTY (Kevin Spacey) to talk to, a slightly more human and emphatic version of ‘2001’s HAL9000 that follows Sam around via ceiling tracks and displays smiley faces depending on ‘mood’. On a routine trip out onto the moon’s surface in his moon buggy, Sam crashes, and awakens in the base medical room, told he has been out of conciousness for a few days. When Sam convinces GERTY to allow him back out onto the moon’s surface, he returns to the crashed buggy and discovers an injured man inside who looks just like him.

‘Moon’ is full of ideas and atmosphere made on a budget of $5 million, an almost unthinkable amount for a sci-fi movie in 2009. ‘Transformers 2’ probably spent more than that on their catering. This is a slowly unfolding mystery that instantly engages you, and this can purely be attributed to the clever script and the performance of Rockwell. ‘Moon’ is for all intents and purposes a one-man show, and he carries it effortlessly, confirming his status as one of Hollywood’s best actors of the moment. You never question there being two people onscreen who appear to be the same person, yet display slightly different personalities. Through some clever photography, the illusion is never shattered either.

Special effects and the production design all lovingly evoke ‘Alien’, and the soundtrack is a memorably melancholy piano-based piece by renowned composer Clint Mansell (The Fountain). ‘Moon’ feels like something made in 1979 but was tucked away unseen for all this time, finally uncovered for an audience weary of overblown CGI and hungry for ideas and vision. It’s one small step for Hollywood. 

FOUR OUT OF FIVE