Moon

Moon (2009) is a melancholy science fiction film directed by Duncan Jones. The picture is gloomy and derivative, but it is made with narrative assurance and effective. Jones uses miniature models to simulate the industrial equipment at the moonbase haunted by the lonely Sam Rockwell and the ‘exterior’ shots are impressively designed. Made on a ridiculously low budget for an “effects” picture (5 million dollars), the movie looks great and achieves a high-degree of apparent realism – the moon-base and environs, as well as Gertie (an obvious descendant of Kubrick’s HAL 9000 voiced by the unctuous Kevin Spacey) are highly convincing. The plot is based on concepts most famously dramatized in Bladerunner and involves a morose contract worker isolated on the dark side of the moon harvesting something called Helium-3. The worker discovers that he is, in fact, merely a clone of some other worker who initiated activities at the base and who has departed for the Earth and his family years before – all of the worker’s apparent memories are merely implants to keep the poor guy company. (These films never explain why the creator of the various robots or clones felt the need to implant in their creatures memories of love affairs and childhoods that never happened – it seems a complicated subterfuge that always yields misery.) The film addresses an anxiety and fear that we all experience at some point or another – suddenly, we grasp that we aren’t the bold, imaginative and unique individuals that we thought we were; instead, we discover that we’re just one of a multitude all similarly configured and almost identically programmed. Dramatizing this realization drives many films both in genre form and otherwise – for instance, King Vidor’s great The Crowd depicts recognition of this sort dawning on the young hero, a resident of a big, expressionistically inhuman city: tragedy teaches the boy that in the end, he’s just a member of the great anonymous “crowd” – and the camera takes flight at this recognition, sweeping back away from the young man who is watching a movie to show a thousand other people all reacting with identical hilarity to the images shown him on the screen. Jones is the son of David Bowie and the film was produced by Sting’s wife – the movie exists because the young director, who seems incredibly nice and ingratiating in the extras on the disc, has high-placed relatives and friends in the entertainment business. But the picture is gripping and carefully imagined and well worth watching. (It’s also considerably more carefully plotted than the chaotic Source Code, Jones’ recent feature that made very little sense at all).