Moon

Director: Duncan Jones

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey

Sam Rockwell always seems to play the support, and rarely gets chance to shine in a lead role. Even when relegated to background cast, he always delivers a fine performance and stands out amongst the rest of the cast. When I first heard that he was to star in this low budget sci-fi, I knew right then that I had to see it. Not only is he the lead in the film, but he plays himself twice and, aside from a few short lines by Kevin Spacey, is more or less the only character in the film. 

Moon is directed by Duncan Jones (formerly Zowie Bowie), and is set sometime in the future. Helium 3 has become the source of fuel for the Earth, and is harvested by remote drones on the Moon. One man is assigned to spend a 3 year work-period monitoring the operations. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the current worker who is only a couple of weeks away from going home. As the days tick by, and his return to Earth gets closer and closer, Sam begins to doubt his sanity when he sees brief glimpses of other people on the base. One such vision leads him to accidentally crash his moon-rover vehicle into one of the harvesters. Sam awakens in the infirmary, having no recollection of the crash, and seemingly fit and healthy. He travels out to the site of the crash and finds himself still in the wreckage. Bringing the other Sam back, the pair begin to cautiously accept who they are, and try to understand what is going on. 

You could place Moon alongside films such as Silent Running, 2001, Solaris, Sunshine, and all other sci-fi that focus more on the human drama and lonliness of space missions. The low budget never seems to lessen the film, and the set design for the base is well conceived and laid out, given small touches to make it feel lived-in. Sam's only companion on the base is GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), a robot programmed to help him during his 3 years. The small details carry over to GERTY who has old post-it notes stuck on him, reminders of issues that required sorting out sometime ago. GERTY, along with the voice, has a small display which expresses mood via smiley faces, used to great effect in moments where GERTY is caught out, or unsure how to answer something and shows a confused, or startled smiley. A small trick that lends well to the film - and given how the computer tends to be up to something sinister in similar films, it keeps you on edge as to whether GERTY is manipulating events throughout. 

There is a curiously well thought out level of science in the film. A test screening with NASA went down well according to reports, and there is indeed work being made into Helium 3 as a fuel source. When it was commented that the base looks solid in construction like a bunker, and not the kind of 'slot-together' buildings they plan to assemble there, Duncan Jones said he would assume they would come to a point where they don't want to take everything with them, and would build stuff out of the Moon's own resources. One scientist there commented that she was already looking into developing 'mooncrete' out of the rock on the Moon. 

The film paces well, and although it is early on where you find out what is happening, you are then involved enough with the two Sam's lives to want to see what will happen to them. This is primarily down to the strength of Sam Rockwell's acting, which considering he is acting opposite himself is no easy achievement. Rockwell holds both roles together, and plays them both with different nuances. 

With such fine performances, an intriguing premise, and fabulously claustrophobic first time direction from Jones, Moon is a rare treat in the mid-summer, a time usually dominated by CGI blockbuster event movies.