Reviews
Moon
July 17 2009
Duncan Jones
Starring Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott
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Here is a true space oddity: a low-key, British-funded sci-fi thriller produced by Sting’s wife and directed by David Bowie’s son. Having taken professional cover behind his mother’s maiden name, Duncan Jones (christened Zowie Bowie) has earned his shot at feature filmmaking via a splashy career in advertising, where he directed a kung-fu lesbian spot for French Connection which, improbably, was every bit as good as it sounds.
Moon is a thoughtful but imperfect alternative to the brain-dead blockbusters that dominate the summer. With an aesthetic borrowed from Dan O’Bannon’s ‘used future’, Jones conjures the ghosts – both literal and metaphorical – of Tarkovsky’s Solaris (or perhaps Soderbergh’s glossier version) in the story of a mining contractor whose three-year stint on the moon is nearing an end.
Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an employee of Lunar Industries, a conglomerate that controls the extraction of ore from the surface of the moon to fulfil the earth’s energy needs. This is a convincing landscape of industrial machinery, sweat and loneliness – a knowing reaction to the shiny surfaces of 2001. Indeed, Sam’s only companion is a computer, GERTY (Kevin Spacey), whose dispassionate voice is both familiar and sinister.
And yet Moon is full of misdirection. In an atmospheric first act, Jones effectively turns our familiarity with sci-fi archetypes to his advantage, as the audience struggles to decode the film’s signals. Should we be expecting the techno-fear of 2001? The ET intruder of Alien? The space psychosis of Sunshine? This paranoid guessing game induces a creeping sense of cabin fever that mirrors Sam’s own descent into apparent madness, as a series of hallucinations leads him to question his sanity.
Jones has achieved a lot with very little. Clearly made on a shoestring, Moon is nevertheless full of ambition. Though it would have been easier (and cheaper) to confine the action to Sam’s quarters, there are numerous excursions to the surface. And though the special effects are more Spaceballs than Star Wars, Gary Shaw’s photography provides a high-class finish, while Jones’ glossy direction betrays the early influence of Tony Scott.
If anything, the craters in this particular Moon are a result of Nathan Parker’s screenplay rather than any technical or financial limitations. A twist at the halfway mark reveals the dark secret behind Lunar Industries’ corporate philosophy, but as the threat to Sam shifts from his sanity to his life, the film loses its interior, psychological menace, and replaces it with an external threat that is too remote to sustain the dramatic tension. Parker is also guilty of some logical gaffes (Sam’s hallucinations are a vision of somebody he could never have met) and pedestrian resolutions. The latter stages of the film are benign and airless, failing to provide either a serious critique of a corporation unhitched from its moral bearings, or a dramatic narrative with sufficient punch.
As ever, Sam Rockwell is an engaging presence, here balancing his trademark charm with a haunted alter ego. But Kevin Spacey is a duff choice as GERTY, a piece of stunt casting that only serves to distract from the hermetic isolation of the rest of the film. Hollywood has seeped in through the airlock, but this is a defiantly British film. It’s one we can be proud of – in moderation.
Anticipation:
Enjoyment:
In Retrospect:
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Just caught Moon this afternoon, and was intrigued by its ambiguous plotting, which I still don't feel that I've fully deciphered. On the one hand, it might be exactly as this review suggests – i.e. a brooding psychodrama transformed by the halfway-point 'twist' into a sort of dystopian conspiracy thriller with an identifiable, external threat. On the other hand, it might remain an internalised psychodrama right until the film's (and its main character's) end. On this reading, Sam, already avowedly talking to himself a lot and hallucinating when we first meet him owing to his long-term isolation, suffers an accident while in his lunar vehicle, and spends the rest of the film injured and caught in a paranoid fantasy (reflecting both his sense of abandonment and the fragmentation of his identity) as his life slowly ebbs away in the damaged vehicle – i.e. all along Sam really is 'the one and only', and the film is yet another variation on the 'Incident at Owl Creek Bridge' type of plot-in-the-head.
Did anyone else see any of this in the film, or am I going crazy too?
Written by Anton Bitel on July 17th, 2009 at 19:55
Jones is not his mother's maiden name. David Bowie's real name is David Jones. His mother's maiden name was Angela Barnett.
Written by Andy on July 20th, 2009 at 08:55
So I'm not the only person who noticed that…
Written by Lim Salt on July 20th, 2009 at 09:57
Yeah, check your facts Bochenski!
Written by Andy on July 21st, 2009 at 07:40
Oh-oh: Bowie nerd alert…
Written by Matt B on July 21st, 2009 at 22:22
Nice review – just caught Moon this evening. Interesting you've said it loses its way in the second half. New Yorker said the same thing. I think that's quite often the way with high concept space sci-fi. It either descends into hallucinogenic nonsense (Sunshine, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, Solaris, to name but a few) or action movie histrionics (Aliens, Event Horizon, Pitch Black). Perhaps when all you have to work with are the narrow confines of a spaceship, it's quite easy to write yourself into a corner.
Written by Dan Stewart on July 23rd, 2009 at 22:26
Surely Sunshine is more action movie histrionics than hallucinogenic nonsense?
Written by Andy Love on July 24th, 2009 at 13:10
I dont think that either 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris can be said to descend into hallucinogenic nonsense, they may be a bit out there but nonsense is a very harsh word to use. I may be being fiercely defensive here (the films are worth it) but in my opinion both endings are filled with meaning, it just happens to be the sort you have to decipher for yourself and in thats sense it is all the more meaningful and appropriate (with both films being about trying to come to terms with our place in the larger scheme of things).
Written by Sally Rushbrook on July 24th, 2009 at 14:03
Any critic can spot a flaw in a movie, a loss of purpose at the halfway point – but how often does life unravel according to cinematic tropes? The movie could have been even more "real" had the characters done fewer "movie-like" things. Had I been Sam #1, I would at least have considered the available suicide chamber over a slow, dissolute death.
Written by Dave on July 25th, 2009 at 03:38
But what if there is no other Sam but Sam "#1", and indeed no suicide chamber, but just a slow, dissolute death, and the only 'choices' available appear in one's ebbing imagination?
Written by Anton Bitel on July 25th, 2009 at 08:02
Nerds? No, we're just sticklers for accuracy, unlike some people….
Written by Lim Salt on July 29th, 2009 at 07:59
What I liked about this film was that it got you thinking about what was going on. What happened to the real Sam Bell? What was the cause of the clones' blood vomiting and hair loss? Do they have a short life span? Were they exposed to radiation? Who are the people taking Sam #2 back to Earth? Do the company know it's not the original?
It's a strange, quiet but exhilirating experience, with good performances from the likes of Matt Berry (The IT Crowd) and a silky voiced Kevin Spacey as surprisingly empathetic computer GERTY, but this is Sam Rockwell's show, completely nailing his role as two Sam Bells, one quiet, jaded despite having been created after sevral months (maybe longer, who can tell?), and tired from the heaviness of memory loaded in from previous incarnations, and the other, younger, fresher, calm, eager to work, kind and sympathetic; this is the one who finally goes home in the place of his near-dying predecessor..
Written by Tamsin on August 24th, 2009 at 21:31
The hallucinations of the girl are clearly artificially implanted (along with his memories) as a means to make sam 1# crash in the moon rover, thereby killing the first clone at the end of his life cycle just as the new one is awoken. Sorry but I thought that was pretty clear.
I enjoyed the whole film and felt it tied up all the plot threads beautifully in the final act.
Written by Tom on October 31st, 2009 at 09:55
Tom , why would a corporation go to the trouble (and vast expense) of allowing its clone(s) to die by crashing one costly piece of equipment into another costly piece of equipment, when it has already tried and tested the (much cheaper) method of tricking the obsolescent clone into a suicide chamber with the promise of a return home?
I agree that the threads tie up elegantly in the final act – but I think that I end up seeing a rather different knot from the one that you do…
Written by Anton Bitel on October 31st, 2009 at 10:20
Intriguing idea–but I think that it adds more complication than the film warrants. I do believe that clones are meant to represent Sam's reality–it is an anti-corporate morality story. Simply having a single Sam hallucinating the rest makes no story sense.
Written by davidrs on November 2nd, 2009 at 13:46
Having a single Sam hallucinating everything post-crash makes no less story sense to me than the similar types of 'all-in-the-(dying/dead)-mind' stories found in, e.g., [SPOILER ALERT!!!!] Carnival of Souls, Point Blank, Brazil, Jacob's Ladder, A Pure Formality, Mulholland Dr., Donnie Darko, The I Inside, Stay (2005), Wristcutter's: A Love Story, Yella and The Escapist. More importantly, it adds a psychological depth and subtlety that Moon otherwise begins to lose in its second half to sensational thriller plotting…
In any case, my reading in no way stops Moon from being 'an anti-corporate morality story'. Moon is that, surely, on any reading. It is just that, on my reading, that story unfolds in Sam's head – but, for all that, it still reflects (through a glass darkly) on the sort of corporate set-up in which a worker could be effectively abandoned, left incommunicado, and exposed to constant risk, by a corporation concerned more with the maintenance of its regular shipments than with the security (physical and mental) of its employees. On my reading, Sam is not the actual clone he imagines himself to be, but he might as well be, given his treatment by his employers as an expendable number, easily replaced.
Written by Anton Bitel on November 2nd, 2009 at 14:59
Just watched the making of on my Moon DVD, didn't get to see this one at the cinema but bought it and watched twice at home this week. I really liked it. I agree it lost some of the tension in the second half, the first half was truly brilliant though. And, we did get a bit of emotional punch in the second half. I couldn't care less who voiced Gerty, I'm useless at remembering actors so Kevin Spacey meant not much to me… Gerty had just the right tone to make me on edge.
I agree with Anton that it could all be in Sam1's head, but I don't think it is…
Did anyone think of the Blade-Runner parallel? How replicant's had a four year lifespan? (I thought it was 3 so it was a direct parallel, but turns out it's 4) So is Sam bleeding away a result of him coming to the end of his 'contract' and lifespan?
The hallucinations are clearly the result of implants, presumably either:
a) The corporation aren't clever enough to filter out everything unnecessary from the original Sam's mind, so leaving thoughts/memories that are may be unhelpful to the clone's operation
b) The clone is, in fact biological and hence can react to implanted thoughts in seemingly random ways, including having entirely new dreams or hallucinations based on the implanted memories. This is in fact more likely, because as in Blade Runner, the clones have little life experience and understanding so are more prone to mental confusion/breakdown.
Anton Biel "…into a sort of dystopian conspiracy thriller with an identifiable, external threat."
I though that although there was a shift in the second half, really we were still seeing the internal threat and torment as the central story line. The external threat was an added complication, but the real question was still: Who is Sam? and what is he going to do?
As Sam1 broke down emotionally and physically and Sam2 took on the role of leader and decision maker, we weren't so much concerned with Elisa, but with the paths that the Sams were choosing to take.
Was Sam1 just going to break down, give up and die? Was Sam2 going to help him, kill him, or give in and give up too?
The timing at the end was fantastic, and the score just made it. Well done Clint Mansell, it wouldn't have been the same without the pensieve, eery background.
Oh, and a massive HOORAY! for British Indy Cinema :D
Written by @silvar_ on February 10th, 2010 at 15:33