Duncan Jones Is Moon-lighting

With a low budget sci-fi film that is the best film this year

BY COLIN ENQUIST

Moon is a science fiction and thriller film that is the feature debut of director Duncan Jones. The very small cast in the film is led by Sam Rockwell (Choke) as the employee being contracted by the Lunar Industries, a company that is extracting helium-3 from the moon, and Kevin Spacey (21) as his robot companion. After being stationed on the lunar base Sarang for almost 3 years, Sam begins to hallucinate. With only two weeks left before completing his assignment, Sam wants nothing more than for his expedition to end so he can return to Earth. Jones co-wrote the script with Nathan Parker.

I have to start with Sam Rockwell (whose character is also named Sam) and his underrated acting ability. Not only does he parlay with a robot for almost the entire film but he is really the only character on screen the entire time! Using his bag of tricks, or acting skills, Sam expresses almost every emotion from sheer anger to tenderness.

This film is sci-fi at its best. Inventive, unique, this is a masterfully intriguing story that uses the lack of dialogue extremely well, giving viewers the faint hints throughout the film to figure it out for themselves. Themes are normally abundant in sci-fi films and this one is no exception. My argument would be the director was playing with the theme of isolation the most but handles many items including disbelief, powerful corporations, environmental issues, moral questions about technology and the advancement we seem to be heading for. The brilliance of Jones script is once you get the actual twist, you are not sure if it is real or just a hallucination of Sam’s.

Gerty, the highly advanced robot voiced by Kevin Spacey, is the comic relief of the film. With no way of the artificial intelligent robot of conveying the emotions of his and Sam’s friendship it would have hurt the film but Jones uses the instant messaging emoticons to not only show his emotions but create slight humour during very serious moments.

The score that Clint Mansell created for this film could probably go down as another classic like his “Lux Aterna” score for Requiem for a Dream. Background music is so important in films without much dialogue and Mansell intensified the emotion for every scene. Using pianos to convey most of the score but still having his sharp pangs and tones makes the score ingenious and unlike any score made in recent years.

This film reminded me of the Steven Soderbergh film, Solaris, while having a similar tone it was not examining the same emotions. Moon is based on ideas, not big special effects, and that is why it works so well. The unhurried pace does not falter the story and the film seems tailor made for sci-fi fans. I think this is a movie that examines the human condition better than any film has since Vanilla Sky or A Beautiful Mind.

5 out of 5