The Red Circle

[201]0 // 003 Moon [2009] dir. Duncan Jones

Wow.

The worst part about Moon is how impossible it is to explain it without spoilers. I’m leaving the comments open for discussion about the movie for those who have seen it. So, if you want to see Moon unspoiled, DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS. Onward.

It is the future. Helium-3 pockets have been discovered on the moon, and a large company is mining these resources to provide cheap energy to 70% of the planet. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a mining supervisor of sorts who is ending his three-year contract on Moon Base Sarang. He’s been watching over the base and the mining robots for all that time all by himself. His only companion is a robot named GERTY who is pretty much there to run the higher functions of the base while providing Sam with anything he needs to get the job done. Despite this, Sam is a lonely guy. Direct communication with the Earth has been disabled by some solar flares, so all he has is a pseudo letter correspondence with his wife and young child via recorded video. But, it’s only two weeks until his contract ends and its nearing time that he leave the moon to rejoin his planet. But the effects of a thee year tour with nobody else around are starting to take their toll, and Sam starts seeing some weird shit.

And that’s all you get. To say any more would be to deprive you of all the impact of one of the best films of last year. There aren’t any twists, per se. It’s just that to dissect this film thematically would require me to talk about the plot past the setup, and the thrill of seeing that plot unfold is much more interesting than me talking about it.

It’s a wonderful, small movie. Sam Rockwell gives what is almost assuredly the best performance of his career as Sam. We get to see him play the man ready to begin his three year isolation on a foreign body, and play the tenured man who has dealt with that isolation for the past almost 1,000 days. It’s a remarkable performance, and its one that will be outright ignored at awards time because of both the size and performance of the film at the box office (small, and mediocre) and the fact that the role of Sam Bell has no “actorly” moments that remind you “this is a great performance, dear Academy.” What I’m trying to say is that Sam Rockwell doesn’t Sean Penn this performance.

What he does do is capture the spirit of humanity, both thematically and emotionally, while stranded alone on an orbiting rock. There is nuance to spare here, and the movie demands multiple viewings to sort out the subtleties after the story has been experienced once. Just as nuanced is first time director Duncan Jones’ view of the future. Besides an artificially intelligent robot and a fully formed lunar base, there’s not a lot of tech innovation here – just a world that works. Jones and his production design crew fill the Sarang interiors with tons of detail, none of which are flashy, and all of which make sense in context. The movie is beautiful in a hollowed out sort of way, and Clint Mansell proves without question that he is the best small movie composer working. His score is as sparse as the landscape, but exponentially more beautiful.

There is so much to love about Moon. It’s a wonderfully conceived, acted, designed, directed, and scored movie. And, just like the comparable District 9, the effects work is nigh upon seamless for such a tiny budget. I hope Duncan Jones and Neill Blomkamp (and Primer auteur Shane Carruth, for that matter) continue to work in sci-fi for a long time. They’re single-handedly restoring the faith that George Lucas, McG, and James Cameron have so delicately pissed away this decade. Leave it to the Spawn of Ziggy Stardust and a stupefyingly young South African to tell two of the best tales the genre has seen in years.

I would be exceeding my place to declare Moon a masterpiece. I’ve seen the movie one time, less than six hours ago. But it’s a film that I think I will find myself watching more than twice in this calendar year, and maybe at that time I will be able to give it the title that it may end up deserving. Regardless of that fact, Moon is a near perfect film, an assured debut of a hopefully prolific filmmaker, and one of the best films I have seen in the last 365 days.

Science Fiction is nothing more than the use of the fantastic to tell us about the things that are ultimately very personal and human, and Moon is one of the few movies that manages to transport us to another time and place to remind us why being a human is so unique and important. We are lucky to have Duncan Jones and Sam Rockwell. We are better for having movies like Moon.

UPDATE: According to this article at CHUD, Sony Pictures Classics is not even sending screener copies of the film to awards affiliated folks. I can’t say I’m shocked, but their attempt to pass off the dropping of the ball on internet piracy rather than “we just don’t wanna,” is a little dumb. Either way, this virtually guarantees that Sam Rockwell will be getting zero nominations outside of the useless Saturn awards.

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