Now here is a rarity, a science fiction film that can be described as thoughtful, heartfelt, and human. This directorial debut from Duncan Jones stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, a technician in a Helium-3 mining facility on the moon. He is serving out a 3 year contract in isolation but for the facility's computer GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey.
Moon, like the best science fiction stories, uses the setting to explore some facet of human nature. As the tagline suggests ("The last place you'd ever expect to find yourself"), Jones uses the isolation of the moon base to examine human identity. What is it about Sam that makes him Sam? Although this is a refreshing change from most recent science fiction pictures that are concerned more with explosions than anything else, this is still well-tread ground in the pantheon of science fiction cinema. Works such as
Solaris and
Blade Runner have covered similar ground, arguably more successfully, but Moon is not without its unique charms.
It deserves to be said again that Sam Rockwell gives a terrific performance in what is essentially a one-man act. He's an actor who always seems to take interesting character roles so it's nice to see him getting some of the limelight. I preferred the first half of the film, as Jones really let Rockwell just exist as Sam Bell. It's often more fascinating to watch character just
be onscreen, rather than watch them react to the forces and requirements of the plot, which is what happens soon after Sam's revelatory discovery.
The cinematography also deserves mention. The moon is shown as a desolate and beautiful place, and the use of miniatures instead of CG gives the film a real, tactile feel appropriate to the material. The interior of the space station is sufficiently space station-y, but it is the shots of the moon's surface that linger in my mind: the crawl of the Helium-3 mining vehicle, kicking up rocks and dust into space, or of Earth, visible over the horizon. Maybe the moon isn't such an unlikely place to find yourself after all.
