MOVIE REVIEW: “Moon” (2009)

When I saw my first trailer for “Moon” early last year, I knew immediately it was something I really needed to see. More than that - there’s a zillion movies a year that I do really need to see for this site, after all - this was something I really *wanted* to see. Alas, it was a comparatively low-budget art house flick that never went into wide release. The nearest theater it was playing at in my neck of the woods was three hours away. That’s three hours one way, a six hour round trip. There are limits to even my fanatical geekery, and while I am willing to fly across state lines to catch a really good concert, six hours in the car to see a 90 minute movie seemed…well…a bit much.
But you know what? I should have gone: the movie is that good.
It is, unfortunately, a very hard movie to review without ruining it for the audience. The entire film is built around a series of plot twists, one of them huge, the others still fairly jarring, and to reveal *any* of them does a great disservice to the film and the audience. Ordinarily I give some version of a play by play, but it would just be wrong to do that here, because this is a film best seen completely cold, with no clue what to expect.
What I can tell you is the basic setup: in the not-too-distant future - next Sunday, AD - there’s a guy played by Sam Rockwell, not too different from you and me (Unless you’re a chick, I suppose). Seventy percent of the world’s energy comes form Helium-3, mined on the lunar farside. It’s scooped up and refined by huge robotic ‘harvesters’, and Rockwell’s job is to recover the He3 and ship it back to earth with a rail gun. He also services and repairs the equipment. He’s got no companionship apart from occasional video-mails from earth, and an AI named “Gurtie.“ It’s a lonely, bleak job, and he’s been at it for about three years.
When we first meet him, he’s already in a fairly bad way. He’s long since stopped taking care of his appearance, he’s forgetting things, talking to himself, drifting off in mid-thought, apparently hallucinating a bit, and having long conversations with plants in the hydroponics lab. He’s not screwed too tight, and he’s well aware of it.
This is the setup for the film, and basically sums up its entertaining-yet-unremarkable first third. Then, at the conclusion of the first act, there’s a major twist which completely shakes his world and changes who he is forever. Not to brag or anything, but I saw it coming. I’ve read a lot of books, I’ve seen a lot of movies, and, though it’s not particularly germane, I’ve also listened to a lot of CDs. Eventually you pick up on things. People I know who aren’t as ubergeeky as myself - folks who aren’t head writers at SF websites, basically - have mostly told me that they were utterly gobsmacked by it. A few - say about 15 percent - likewise saw it coming.
It’s a pretty clever twist, and pretty huge, but it doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere. It’s set up furtively, and if you’re reasonably sharp, you can probably figure what it is before it drops on you. What really makes it remarkable, however, isn’t so much the twist, but the really interesting explorations they do with the changed premise *after* the plot twist. Then, right at the hour mark, we get another series of somewhat-less earth-shattering twists. When I say “Less,” I don’t mean they’re bad. Pretty much an entire lesser movie could be built around any one of these ‘lesser’ twists, but in comparison for the first one, we’re somewhat prepared for them, so they have a little less impact on us - as they’re designed to - but they’re pretty devastating for the protagonist.
Most movies have a fairly cut-and-dry three-act formula: Setup, Conflict, Resolution. This movie technically follows that format as well, but on a more accurate level, we have setup, new setup (Which is also a conflict of sorts) and Conflict/resolution (Which could also be argued to be a third setup, though I don’t think accurately.) I’m probably not expressing this well enough, but in non-writerly terms, basically act one is ripples from a stone thrown in a pond, act two is ripples from a different stone interacting with the first set, and the third act is all about the intersection of those ripples as they try to figure out how the hell to get out of the sorry situation they’ve found themselves in.
Storywise, the most brilliant ideas are the simplest. They’re nice and clean and simple and easy to digest, and then you realize as you chew on it that there’s a whole layer of complexity hidden within, and another behind that and another and another. This is that kind of movie: the basic premise, and even the big twist are fairly simple, and yet the more you look at it the more you see, the more complex it gets. Then, somewhere around the 45 minute mark, you can’t help but realize this is a DAMN smart movie. It’s quiet and character-driven, spooky and frequently unexpectedly funny, and sad and triumphant all at the same time. If Ingmar Bergman made SF films, and if he were capable of telling a story in less than epic length, this is the kind of film he would have made. It is lyrical and beautiful and made entirely for grownups. I can't imagine anyone who genuinely likes speculative fiction could possibly come out of this one without thinking that they'd just seen something pretty special.
Definitely, absolutely, unquestionably, if you like SF you *need* to see this film. The story is solidly in Philip K. Dick territory, with a healthy dose of John Varley thrown in, and that’s a good thing. Intellectually, it’s the heir apparent to Blade Runner. It’s not a pulse-pounder or a thrill-ride, but it is unquestionably the best genre film of the century thus far.
OBSERVATIONS
Irrespective of the plot, there are a lot of elements that really jump out at me. Duncan Jones - David Bowie’s son - wrote and directed the film, using a very spare style in both cases. This is a ‘decompressed’ tale, and Jones is content - or perhaps daring enough - to let long silences punctuate the film. Things progress slowly, but never boringly so, the so-called ‘dead air’ giving the audience time to let things set in even as we see the characters try to make sense of it. The periodic silences allow their confusion to mirror ours.
There are also some really interesting uses of sound in here. The soundtrack is likewise spare and restrained, essentially adding to the so-sterile-it’s-hostile feel of the sets. There are several great scenes where someone is trying to talk to another person who’s refusing to listen to them by various means - wailing away on a punching bag, or dancing like a jackass to Katrina and the Waves, or whatever. These are frustrating and funny, and there’s an interesting degree of parallelism in them.
Though there’s noting to really jump out at you, I’m going to say that this movie has the best, most experimental usage of sound I’ve come across in film in many a year.
The sets are beautiful, simultaneously original and feeling a bit reminiscent of Moobase Alpha and 2001 and perhaps the Ulysses Nostromo if they’d had a cleaning budget on that ship. They’re open and cheery and yet kind of oddly claustrophobic.
The special effects are restrained - no gee-gosh-wow zooms over the lunar surface, or explosions, or anything like that. We see enough, and what we see is good, but it’s used to emphasize both the beautiful/deadly nature of the lunar surface, and to emphasize the main character’s isolation and loneliness. Remember that scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen says that everything they did to make the Air Cavalry seem more like they were at home just reinforced how completely out of place they were? The effects in this movie do something similar, not in the same way, but, well, similar. When was the last time you saw a movie that made the moon seem mysterious and magical again? It’s worth the price of admission just for that.
The entire cast is really good, but Sam Rockwell gives a hell of a performance as a man who’s mentally and physically at the end of his rope, but who somehow keeps going even after he’s pushed too far. I can’t say more without giving away spoilers, but suffice to say it’s a grueling, difficult part to play, yet he manages it with apparent ease and nuance. I’d also like to single out “Gurtie” the robot (Voiced by Kevin Spacey) as possibly the best, most intriguing ‘bot since HAL 9000.
What are you waiting for? Go rent it. Now!
Duncan Jones has announced that he intends to do more films set in the “Mooniverse” (I just made that up. Ha!), though probably not any actual sequels. I can’t tell you how excited I am to see what he’s doing next.
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