Last night I saw Duncan Jones's film Moon. Set on -you guessed it- the moon, it follows single astronaut Sam (Sam Rockwell[1]) as he finishes up his 3 year contract drilling for Helium and prepares to head home. Of course nothing is quite as it seems and soon Sam is faced with the sort of booming questions that echo across thousands of sci-fi tomes. Who or what is he? Sam is accompanied by GERTY, the as-standard talking robot who earns the audience's instant mistrust by being the same race as HAL, but the film remains for the most part a one-actor film. Moon was clearly cheap to make (by Hollywood standards) and the bouncing models and limited set nicely reflect the 70s thinking-man's sci-fi such as Silent Running or Dark Star the film attempts to emulate.
Whilst Moon doesn't really have twists, you can easily spoil the plot by knowing too much about it. Unfortunately, I had sussed out the situation about 30 minutes before Sam began to get close to it and felt a little cheated. Have I read or seen too much Sci-Fi? I suspect that a gentle exposition was more in tone with the film's slow pace and implication that time was dripping past and subsequently I wasn't meant to be surprised. I loved the retro set, the inherent claustrophobia it brought and the crumpled mess of marker pens, duvet suits and post-its that was Sam's 'home'. I was also very impressed by the decidedly Amstrad looking GERTY, who managed some fine acting with nothing but emote icons.
My greatest problem with Moon is that whilst it is a beautifully shot, well acted, much needed antithesis to recent blockbuster sci-fi films such as Transformers, I can't bring myself to like it. I never liked Silent Running or it's ilk. Deep thinking Sci-fi books have annoyed me more than interested me for years and I have always wanted to fire photons whenever Star Trek brought up a philisophical episode. This somewhat dulled my enjoyement of Moon, I had a real sense of 'seen it before - got anything new to say/do?'. If you don't have such strong feelings about Sci-fi pondering, go and see Moon. Even if you do, go and see some fine film-making . Just don't think too hard about the antagonist's motives they, unlike the big philosophical questions posed by the film really don't stand up to lengthy consideration.
[1] I met a lovely man called Rockwell Flint once. Possibly the most awesome name EVER.
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I think it's a little harsh to compare Moon with the Star Trek philosophy episodes. The reason the latter were annoying was because the beard-stroking was so overt and clunkily written. In Moon the big ideas aren't voiced out loud by the characters, but are a natural part of the story.
ReplyDeleteI agree you shouldn't think too hard about the plot logic though.
OK, fair point. It wasn't fair to compare Moon to Star Trek, but I still never really liked those 'thinking' 70s films. Maybe I'm just a neanderthal who likes her Sci-Fi with cool sets, explosions and effects. The only reason I liked the talking bomb in Dark Star was that it was scary.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think much of Dark Star either. It all too accurately conveyed the feeling of being really bored in space. Moon was more about being lonely in space, which is depressing but not boring.
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