Mad Man Moon

Yesterday The Dulcinea and I met up with a trio of friends last night to catch Moon out at Sundance. What follows contains spoilers so caveat lector.

Moon concerns Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), the lone worker at a lunar mining operation who is nearing the end of his 3-year commitment as the jack-of-all-trades who ensures a steady supply of helium 3 for Earth. Automated equipment strip mines the moon's surface in search of the energy-rich isotope but Bell must drive out to the large vehicles, which resemble Jawa sandcrawlers, to grab containers of helium 3 to bring back to the base and send back to Earth via rocket drones.

With his term nearly over, Bell is agog with the thought of returning home. Real-time communications have been out for some time and he has had to settle for uxorial video postcards that are perpetually tardy. Keeping him company is GERTY, a robot assistant voiced by Kevin Spacey. GERTY brings to mind HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey with its comforting voice and its eye which, like HAL's, has a black iris but a white pupil. GERTY also has a small screen featuring a yellow smiley face that changes expressions to mirror the conversation. Indeed, Moon has many loving references to classic sci-fi films of the past - off-Earth mining recalls Outland - but 2001 is invoked almost constantly. There's the videophone that Dr. Floyd used to phone home from Space Station V, for instance. Bell is shown running on a treadmill which mimics Poole running in circles on the ringed part of Discovery. There's also a scene where GERTY volunteers to reboot itself so that video footage is erased which stands in contrast to HAL which fought to the death in order to keep Bowman from shutting it down. As the film progresses, Blade Runner is invoked, but I'll get to that later.



At a pivotal point in the film, Solaris came to mind. Bell is getting some hot water from a dispenser when he turns to look back and sees a dark-haired woman sitting in his chair. He sees her again as he is driving on the lunar surface attempting to board one of the mining machines. This hallucination causes him to lose sight of his target and crash.

We are then shown Bell on a table in the infirmary. Curiously enough, he looks fine, perhaps too fine. GERTY tells him to go back to sleep and leaves to attend to other business. Instead, Bell maunders back to what passes for the control room and finds GERTY engaged in a real-time conversation with a couple corporate types on the videophone. Bell's suspicion is further aroused by the fact that GERTY won't let him leave the base to fix the mining machine which is out of commission. He eventually conjures up a problem and an excuse to go outside which gets GERTY to relent. A short drive across the surface, he finds himself at the site of the disabled mining machine and the rover which he had previous crashed. Bells enters the vehicle only to discover the original, hallucination-prone incarnation of himself which he takes back to the base.

At this point there are two Sam Bells running around the base. It is revealed that they are clones of an ur-Sam Bell. The evil mining company keeps a larder full of them who have a lifespan of three years. Blade Runner is evoked here with the clones (briefly) pondering their status much the way replicants did as well as having their limited lives. It is also at this point that Moon failed me. The first act (i.e. – everything up to and including the clone revelation) was excellent. I appreciated how director Duncan Jones kept things interesting with only one actor by giving Bell a relationship of sorts with GERTY – they weren't just human and machine. Moon is certainly a tour de force for Rockwell. We also got to know Bell as someone who was ready to return to Earth and resume his marriage.



However, I found the scenes with the two clones to be, for the most part, lacking. When the clones discover their true identities, they don't seem particularly phased. Bell #1 doesn't seem to care while Bell #2 can only lash out in anger. They eventually form a kind of fraternal bond but I expected more pondering, I expected more scenes with them coming to grips with who they really are and the situation they find themselves in. The deeper, more Phildickean aspects of their predicaments were glossed over, much to my disappointment. Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker want us to look at the contrasts between the Bells in order to gain some kind of understanding about inner space but the distinctions are without difference. The cloned twins do and say nothing of significance. It's all light and no heat. Bell #1 doesn't come across as a man whose 3-year exile has imparted wisdom or taught him anything but rather as someone who has been worn down and is ready to break.

There are a couple scenes in the first act and early in the second which were very effective in creating atmosphere and coloring the viewer's perception of Bell but these devices were quickly dropped. One involved Bell back on Earth in bed with his wife. They are entwined and the camera tracks across their bodies underneath the sheets until a dingy, spacesuit-clad Bell is seen at the foot of the bed reaching out towards the lovers' feet.



The second involves Bell on the bed in the infirmary coming into consciousness. Focus here is incredibly shallow and keeps his cheek and chin from being clear simultaneously. Instead his right eye and cheek are in focus one moment with his chin and mouth the next. The cinematography here adds a slight but palpable sheen of disorientation to the proceedings which would have been appropriate later in the film as well. However brief, the daydream bed scene was ripe with insight into Bell's state of mind, something sorely lacking in the second and thirds acts of the film. It's a shame that these devices were not allowed to become motifs and give us greater access to the Bells' collective mind.

Despite the severe unevenness of Moon, I have to give Jones and Parker credit for making a hard sci-fi film instead of one that is a melodrama that happens to take place on the moon or an action flick in outer space. Not only that, but they also created a 90-minute story that, for all intents and purposes, involves one character. I sincerely hope that they try again with this genre because, although Moon is a failure, it is a most intriguing one.