Moon by Duncan Jones (2009)
15 June 2009I love science fiction, so when I saw this trailer I was immediately interested, it looked like a cross being 2001 and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2 movies I love, so there was no chance I was missing this. And I wanted to see it even more when I learned that Duncan Jones is in fact David Bowie’s son. Then even more than that when I learned that this incredible looking film only cost $5 million, which is nothing for something that looks this good, I mean most romantic comedies cost more than this nowdays. And then of course their is Sam Rockwell, who can be amazing, so I was hooked. I went and saw this opening weekend, and I am glad I did. This is a great straight science fiction film, only ignoring moon gravity (too expensive to fake), but well worth checking out. A really good film. And gladly Duncan Jones won Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer at the BAFTA’s, though it did not get any nominations for the Oscars.
Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an employee working on the moon base Sarang on a 3 year contract extracting Earth’s new clean power, helium 3. He is the only one there, and is nearing the end of his 3 years, happy to be going home to his wife Tess (dominique McElligott) and young daughter he has never met Eve (Kaya Scodelario). His only companion is the robot Gerty (Kevin Spacey), and Sam is going a little loopy, starting to see a teenaged girl. There are harvesters that mine the helium-3, and when they are full, Sam goes out and picks up the extraction and sends it back to Earth. Currently one of the harvesters is broken, but the other 3 work. Unfortunately the lunar satellites are down, so Sam has no realtime communication with Earth, so his communications are slowly routed through Jupiter. When Sam is out on an extraction, he sees the girl again, and crashed into the harvester. Sam awakens to Gerty, explaining their has been an accident, and Gerty tells him he can’t go out. Gerty tests Sam to see how his skills are, and Sam sneaks out of bed and swears he sees Gerty talking realtime to Earth. Sam decides something is wrong, and fakes an accident with the station to get Gerty to let him out, and he takes a rover to the newly broken extractor and finds the crashed version of himself, in bad shape, but still alive, who he brings back to the station. Now there are 2 Sams, one younger and surlier, and one older and scruffier, both on the base.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
The younger Sam still has a major temper, and starts ripping the base apart to find a “secret room” destroying the older Sam’s model of his hometown he has been making so long, he doesn’t remember starting it.
Eventually the two Sams start working together, and they go out in rover’s past where they have ever gone, and find transmission towers that are blocking communications to the base. The older and scruffier Sam makes call to Earth to talk to his wife Tess, but gets a teenaged version of his daughter Eve, who tells him Tess is dead, and she call for her father, and we hear Sam’s voice on the phone, before Sam hangs up.
The scruffier Sam heads back to base, while the younger Sam keeps looking for more towers. The older Sam starts searching the base, especially the room where he is supposed to get sent back to Earth in, which turns out to be an incinerator, and Sam finds a room, which when the other Sam come back they go into and find a room under the base filled with clone Sam’s.
Meanwhile a cleanup crew is on it’s way to “fix” the base, and it’s problems, so they don’t have much time.
The older Sam is getting much worse, and with Gertie’s help he realizes that he only has a 3 year lifespan, and that he is dyeing. The younger Sam makes a plan to send the older Sam back to Earth in the Helium 3 launch vehicle, and gets Gerty to wake another Clone, so they can kill him, and have him in the crashed vehicle when the fixers arrive.
The older Sam knows they can’t kill themself though, and he is dyeing anyway, so he goes with Sam to be the Sam crashed in the rover. The younger Sam goes back and puts the coordinates of the towers into the extractors so they will be run down, and manages to launch in the Helium-3 vehicle just before the fixers land and find the new clone, and the dying clone in the rover.
The film ends with the craft going to Earth, and we hear a radio broadcast about the clone Sam testifying before congress about the companies illegal actions.
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Really an enjoyable and well done science fiction film. I really enjoyed it, and think it is a must see.
Sam Rockwell is amazing, especially acting with himself (hard for someone trained to improve off another actor), and showing the progression of the character all at once. We have the older version of himself, that has learned much about himself and control temper, and the younger version with a horrible temper, which was part of what made him come to the moon and leave his wife and unborn daughter behind for 3 years.
Really worth checking out. I am looking forward to seeing what Duncan Jones goes on to direct.
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