A curious hybrid of film genres, motifs, philosophical pondering and low scale, low budget indie pop, Duncan Jones's debut is a pure Sci-Fi story that evokes memories of Solaris and 2001.
It's the near future, where it's been discovered that clean energy can be harvested from the surface of the moon. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is currently approaching the end of his three year contract alone on the site, when things start taking a rather strange turn.
After the briefest of brief prologues explaining the back story of Lunar Industries and their solo touring employees tending to mostly automated resource gatherers, we jump into the tale with little pre-amble.
Sam spends his days at the moon base attempting to keep busy, whether it by working on his meticulous model village, staying fit on the exercise machines or playing one man ping pong games. His only responsibility is monitoring and adjusting the work patterns of computer controlled harvester crafts on the surface, and keeping an ear out for messages from headquarters. His only company is an AI drone bot, Gerty (sublimely voiced by Kevin Spacey), a quirky invention that both operates within the mainframe and displays emoticons to express mood while expressing humourously polite behaviour. His main motivation comes from the occasional video logs he receives from his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott).
Though he is buoyed by his return planetside in two weeks time, Sam starts to encounter glitches in his life, starting with a hallucination of a young woman in his armchair. Distracted, he crashes his buggy into one of the harvesters while on a mission. He awakens in the infirmary being treated by the caring Gerty, without any memory of the accident and a newfound unfamiliarity with his surroundings. While recuperating from his concussion, he becomes suspicious of everything around him. When he overhears Gerty having a live feed conversation with his superiors, despite the communication antenna supposedly making this impossible, he decides to investigate for himself.
Outmaneuvering Gerty, Sam is able to reach the crashed buggy and discovers a man inside: himself. After carrying his apparent exact double back to the base, he is tossed into a surreal existence in the same environment of a second version of himself, apparently the original. While the injured Sam displays an outward enthusiasm for company, as unworldly as the set up is, Sam 2 is less bright at the prospect, showing an aggressive attitude and desperation to work out the cause of the anomoly, as the two bicker and theorise. Sam 2 is convinced his companion is a clone of himself, an apparently paranoid delusion, but more evidence piles up to back up his claims. When a message is received from HQ announcing the imminent arrival of a rescue team to fix the damage caused by the accident, the two Sams finally begin working together to both decode the puzzle and ensure their survival.
Considering the unconventional setting of this mindbedding, challenging drama thriller, it is easy to begin piling up possible explanations while watching, ranging from the increasingly outlandish to the simplistic. Throughout the story, you will find yourself pondering insanity, non-reality, human cloning, doppelgangers and alternate universes in an attempt to rationalise the impossibility of two Sams. That the film resists modern Holywood trends for shock twists and juxtaposition makes it both more respectable and ultimately improves the emotional appreciation and pathos of it's hubris.
In this sense, it's no wonder Duncan Jones is already on the fast track for big things, his second picture being the bigger budget, critically acclaimed 'better than it should be' Source Code. He shows extraordinary confidence in his vision (though the script is not his, the idea is), with a healthy focus on character, making clear this is a human story, and some almost subliminal hints towards the plot's destination that mean you're never certain despite the story refusing to toss around red herrings or rely on MacGuffins to power itself. In that vain, the subtle, nicely understated script brings an edge of modest realism to an extraordinary occurence, choosing to have more interest in the isolation and mental strain, giving Sam Rockwell plenty of material to get stuck into for his duel role.
And Rockwell, for so long a highly underappreciated chameleonlike supporting character actor, thrives on his new found focus, displaying versatility as the two Sams, seemingly on the opposite ends of an emotional cycle. He also brings a much needed charm and sympathy to their characters, anchoring us emotionally into their plight and struggle, both at the unforgiveable surroundings and also at the stomach wrenchingly unreal conundrum they face.
Backed by some mind boggilingly good effects (considering a highly modest $8m budget), great set design and cinematography, and a memorable and effective score from Clint Mansell, Moon is a film that draws you in gently and keeps you there, making you feel like a bystander to events, almost addicted to the isolated setting, the unseen third human character in proceedings. The odyssey passes in an almost dreamlike passage, troublingly personal and strangely optimisitic in places, despite it's apparent hopelessness. As explanations are provided, and the elephant in the room is addressed, there is also a philosophical issue raised in Blade Runner fashion.
A great slice of original, enchanting, hypnotising yet modest storytelling that relies on the sci of the sci-fi purely to make the story work on it's own merits, Moon is both a statement of intent from Jones and an incredibly high calibre piece that will doubtlessly be looked back upon as a classic of it's time. With Rockwell on this form, with the next level of his career havingly seemingly been reached, it is also totally unmissable.
9/10
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