FILM CHALLENGE: 85) Moon

85) Moon

Director: Duncan Jones

Year: 2009

Plot Summary: With only 3 weeks left in his three year contract, Sam Bell is getting anxious to finally return to Earth. He is the only occupant of a Moon-based manufacturing facility along with his computer and assistant Gerty. The long period of time alone however has resulted in him talking to himself for the most part, or to his plants. Direct communication with Earth is not possible due to a long-standing communication malfunction but he does get an occasional message from his wife Tess. When he has an accident, however, he wakens to find that he is not alone.

The winner of the top prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival last year, where I first saw the movie, Moon is a science fiction flick that, instead of being heavy on the special effects and the action, is carried by an intriguing mystery and a fantastic study of isolation and loneliness.

Sam Rockwell plays the main character and is the only actor in the movie for 99% of the time. Alone on the moon base, he has an accident when repairing one of the generators and later wakes up to discover another Sam Bell standing over him. Therefore, not only that but he also has to play two characters: The 'original' Sam and the 'new' Sam who is a representation of the man he was when he first arrived at the moon base. Despite how hard it must have been, Rockwell plays the roles effortlessly giving each of the Sam Bell's a different personality and character while carrying the entire weight of the movie on his back.

So who is the other Sam Bell and why is he there? Understanding the main enigma requires you to use your brain and put the pieces of the puzzle together. However, at no point does it feel like Duncan Jones has tried to make it hard to follow. He very admirably treats his audience with the intelligence they deserve while refraining from making it pretentious or convoluted. Moreover, the mystery is one that will have you hooked from the very first few minutes. Jones takes care of most of the exposition in the very the opening scene, an advert for the company that Bell is working for, allowing the audience to get right into the drama.

Like I said, the low budget, therefore, means Jones has a limited use of special effects. But nevertheless, he manages to make Moon equally as realistic as any movie by Michael Bay or Steven Spielberg. Taking a leaf out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, much of what he does is achieved through simple camera tricks and effective set design. A very rare and commendable approach in era of $100 million budgets and amazing technology.

Despite how enigmatic and arty I have made it sound, Moon is simply a very entertaining movie. It has its moments of sadness when the truth about Tess and his daughter is revealed, it's spine-chillingly haunting and suspenseful throughout, and even mixes in some humour with the best use of a pop song in a sci-fi film ever as "I am the one and only" blasts out of Bell's alarm clock.

5/5

By Daniel Sarath with 4 comments