Moon

8 / 10

2009.  Directed by first-timer Duncan Jones (who later proved it wasn’t a fluke with Source Code).  Starring (in order of appearance) Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey’s voice, Sam Rockwell and Sam Rockwell.

A few things have changed as I’ve grown older.  I’ve come to like olives.  I’ve grown hair in most places (except that elusive gap between my moustache and my chinbeard).  And I’ve finally started to appreciate good sci-fi/space movies.  Like Moon.

At the start of Moon, we meet Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a solitary astronaut manning an energy extraction operation on the dark side of the moon.  Sam’s three-year contract with Lunar Industries is coming to an end and he’s preparing to leave the lonely space station (or, as I like to call them, spations), and return to his wife and young daughter on Earth.

But then strange stuff starts to happen.

Sam starts to feel a bit unwell and he has a couple of eerie visions of a young girl in and around the spation.  During one such episode, he crashes his space rover (spover) and blacks out.

Sam wakes up back in the spation, and his do-all, know-all space robot (spobot), Gerty (voiced effortlessly by the droll Kevin Spacey) reminds him of his accident and tells him to rest-up until it’s time to go home.

Unconvinced and paranoid, Sam tricks his spobot, leaves the spation and finds the crashed spover. He opens the door, looks inside and sees…

OK, pause.

Here’s the deal – it is impossible to continue reviewing Moon without spoiling the film’s big twist. But I think that’s ok, because this is one of those rare early twists that sets-up the substantial rest of the movie, rather than dropping your jaw at the end.  It’s the opening one of your presents on Christmas Eve kind of twist (your mum says you’ll be disappointed that you didn’t wait, but you never are) rather than the Verbal is Keyser Söze, Bruce Willis is dead, Maggie shot him kind of twist.  So let’s find out what’s in that big one with the red ribbon…

Unpause.

Sam. Sam sees Sam!

So, yeah, turns out Sam and Sam are both clones of the original Sam Bell, and, like countless Sam clones before them, have been ‘awakened’ to man the spation in three-year stints, after which their efficiency will be deemed to have expired and they will be unceremoniously dispatched.

DO NOT GROAN.

Sure, it sounds a bit far-fetched and yes, we all know that clones can be dull, clones can be dull.  But Moon is anything but.

Because despite the nerdy-tech of the spations, spobots, spovers and splones (space clones), at its lunar heart, Moon reveals itself to be quite a deep and thought-provoking study of humanity and human emotion.

When the Sams realise their predicament, the manifestations of their different emotional reactions are raw, upsetting and very, very real.  Sam 1 is sad, vulnerable and volatile.  Sam 2 is cold, rational and angry.  But they’re both still Sam.  Their interactions with each other are at different times awkward, funny, touching and frightening, but, somehow, always convincing and believable.

For this, and, realistically, for much of Moon‘s success, the applause goes to Sam Rockwell for an astounding performance that has skyrocketed him right past the Oscars to the OTC Tick List.  Sam’s difficult double-role is executed perfectly (as are the special effects which put two of him in the same place at the same time).  The different nuances and subtleties that he attributes to the two different personalities of the Sams are so persuasive that it is easier to believe that they are sophisticated clones than characters played by the same actor.

The story is a good one, and Jones’ direction is impressive, but without Rockwell, Moon may have been entirely missed by audiences and could, right now, be sitting on a dusty Blockbuster shelf next to other sci-fi misses like Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.  I can think of only two actors who could have done an equally good job – Jackie Chan and Jackie Chan.  Or maybe Tom Hanks, but set on a tropical island.

Duncan Jones has publicly said that he took much of his inspiration for Moon from sci-fi classics like Alien, Silent Running and Outland.  He has not yet acknowledged Paul.

I think Moon is better than the lot of them, and I’m sure that in 10 years time, sci-fi films will be paying homage to it.  Hopefully I’ll have grown a full beard by then.