Moon, Duncan Jones’ (David Bowie’s son) directorial debut, is peculiarly innovative because, while grounded in modern day pragmatism, it’s sprinkled heavily with a dusting of sci-fi clichés. Set in the close-enough future, the thriller follows Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an astronaut nearing the end of his three-year contract with Lunar Industries, the leading supplier of a moon-based natural element that has miraculously rid the Earth of its energy crisis. Space, in this sense, is no longer made a place of exploration, but rather a demystified resource, ripe for the mining.
Sam’s only friend abroad the space station is a talking, emoticon-flashing computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), who is given an unrealistically flexible set of moral characteristics. Aside from GERTY’s endearing, somewhat tongue-in-cheek relationship with Sam, the only real inter-personal communication Sam receives comes in the form of recorded videos from his wife and child on Earth.
In these final weeks of his contract abroad, Sam begins to experience cognitive glitches, lapses in memory, hallucinations, which are either a side effect of isolation, or something darker. Then, after Sam’s near-fatal crash with a drilling base on the moon’s surface, the façade of his existence begins to crumble as another Sam arrives on the base. Yes, we are talking about an honest-to-God clone here. But who exactly is the true Sam? Are they both clones? And if so, what would be left if everything “Sam” had worked for -- his family, his purpose -- had been fabricated by the company?
Jones is very clever to combine kitschy themes -- cloning, human-like robotics -- with a sinister plot of nihilistic corporatism. Paired with Sam Rockwell’s brilliant performance alongside himself, Moon is a triumphant homage that pats its space-junky viewers on the back, while also giving them an intriguing thriller that’s relatable and somewhat grounded.
-- MIKE BERLIN
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