Chris Holmes Online

Where are we?

In the future, where mankind has figured out how to harvest the ore of the moon and use it as a fusion-based energy source. According to the Lunar Industries advertising campaign, this fusion-based energy accounts for 70% of the planet’s total energy consumption. And it’s all thanks to the hard work of people like Sam Bell.

Or more specifically – just Sam Bell.

Sam, played brilliantly by the versatile Sam Rockwell, is at the end of a three-year contract. His job is that of caretaker; responsible for welfare of the automated harvesters that comb the lunar landscape and process the topsoil for the precious H3 ore. Sam’s job is to handle what cannot be automated, which involves periodically rendezvousing with the harvesters when they are full and shipping their ore back to Earth. He passes his time jogging on a treadmill, carving intricate buildings into a replica of his hometown, watering plants, and listening to video messages from his wife and daughter back on Earth. With the exception of his robot companion, GERTY (voiced by the familiar Kevin Spacey in a role that strongly evokes the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey), he’s all alone.

Sam has two weeks left on his contract. He desperately wants to go home and see his wife and daughter. “Three years is a long haul”, he says. We see he means it with every ounce of yearning on his face. The long stretch might be a bit more bearable if it were not for the broken communication system on the lunar station that doesn’t seem high on the priority list for Lunar Industries to fix. Sam is only able to get video messages from his wife via Jupiter satellite relays on tape delay. He’s lonely. It’s time to go home.

The last two weeks on the lunar station should be as boring as the first two. But if you’ve seen the trailer then you know something happens. I will not reveal exactly what that something is, because to do so would spoil the film. The trailer does a good job of creating some ambiguity; there are a few possibilities as to what might have actually happened and keeping the audience guessing, at least for a little while, is a strength of the film.

The “surprise”, however, is revealed fairly early on (and many movie goers will be able to riddle it out anyway), but that isn’t the point: the film is not just about the surprise. The film is about reality, and more precisely our perception of that reality. And our expectations. Sam discovers things about himself that he didn’t know, and it is this discovery – and the way Sam handles this new information – that is at the heart of the film. We might not fully agree with the way Sam handles his situation or the way he reacts to things, but that is because we’re not Sam. We’re different, and our perceptions are different.

Moon is very much a throwback to the science fiction films of old. Director Duncan Jones writes that he is a big fan of films like Outland and Alien; films “where blue collar workers tried to maintain there humanity in dehumanizing, off-Earth environments”. You can feel the influence in every frame of Moon. This is a character-driven film; it’s about emotions and motives and the way people think and behave. And it is simply amazing.

If there’s a downside to Moon, it is that it has such a limited distribution right now. I had to travel two hours to Spokane, WA to see it. I doubt it will play anywhere near where I live by the time its run is over. Which is a shame, because for people who really love film and can appreciate a great story, Moon is something that should be seen. It’s certainly much better than some of the summer’s other science fiction offerings (I’m looking at you, Transformers and you, Terminator: Salvation).