I like movies that raise questions and make one not only think about what's occurring in the film, but also ponder thematic elements that transcend the work and encompass bigger things. I hate films, however, where other questions -- concerning characters, behavior and plot revelations & explanations, or the lack thereof -- end up taking the viewer out of the moment due to existing as distracting points, regardless of whether they're ultimately addressed and answered or not.
For those two reasons, I'm torn about my view of "Moon." It's a low-budget throwback to cautionary "thinking man" sci-fi films of the 1960s and '70s where the future was so sterile looking and bright -- yeah, okay, everyone sing along, "I gotta wear shades" -- yet raised moral, ethical and various other "al" issues at the same time about the future of humankind (known as "mankind" back in the day).
The film begins with just two weeks left at the end of lunar mining worker Sam Bell's three-year shift up on Earth's original satellite. We're sometime in the future where fusion energy has been discovered in rocks on the far side of the moon and automated harvesters dig them up and somehow the juice is extracted and sent back to Earth. That part isn't terribly detailed, but that omission isn't what bothered me.
Instead, it's why there's just one human positioned there for such an important job (granted he's accompanied by computer named Gerty -- voiced in a faux HAL impersonation by, of all people, Kevin Spacey -- that hangs from and slides along the ceiling from compartment to compartment). Then there's the question of how the powers that be decided upon a little less than 1,100 days as the given term, and why the only correspondence back to earth is via prerecorded video segments rather than live feeds.
Had this been some outpost light years away from Earth, taken place back in the '60s or arrived with any number of easy to insert explanations, those issues wouldn't have become so bothersome to yours truly.
While all of that's ultimately answered -- to varying degrees of satisfaction and/or believability -- my need for such information removed me from the proceedings before then, leaving me feeling detached from the story as well as the eventual predicament facing the protagonist.
He's played here by Sam Rockwell, the always fun to watch yet perpetually underrated (a least by the general public) actor who essentially has to carry the film all by himself.
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Actually, to be more accurate, that would be with himself. And therein lies another problem that bedevils the film, at least in execution. For after a lunar rover accident, Sam wakes up back in the station, weak and told that he's no longer allowed outside. That piques his interest and so he goes AWOL (from his computer companion), returns to the scene of that earlier wreck, and finds someone who looks quite a bit like himself still inside the disabled vehicle.
I'll give credit to writer Nathan Parker and first-time director Duncan Jones for not positioning that discovery near the end of the film as a typical, knock-your-socks off gotcha moment that would make M. Night Shyamalan proud. Yet, by dropping it into the middle of the film -- and foreshadowing the doppelganger bit by a clip from, of all things, the old TV sitcom "Bewitched" (where the lovely Elizabeth Montgomery occasionally and simultaneously played Samantha and her cousin Serena in the same scene) -- the proverbial cat is let out of the bag too soon.
Had the filmmakers played more with our viewpoint of what exactly is occurring at this moment -- Is it a solitary confinement based mental breakdown or at minimum a hallucination; a result of something in or near the moon that's created that, a la "Solaris;" or has Sam perhaps gone through a wormhole like in "2001" and has now encountered another version of himself? -- this could have been some delicious, sci-fi fun and possibly terror.
Instead, the real explanation quickly follows the first feline out of the sack, leaving the film, its game star, and by default, the viewer, with nowhere to go for the remaining runtime. Sure, there's the fun of seeing Rockwell playing two different but obviously related versions of himself against each other, as well as their eventual discovery of the remaining revelations/explanations.
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But rather than building any sort of momentum, Duncan has the various elements and thus the overall film play out as if they're unfolding in one-sixth of Earth's gravitation -- meaning it's all quite slow and somewhat light, rather than gaining speed while plunging through the darkness.
Again, I appreciate what the film is trying to explore, as well as the intellectual rather than usual action and special effects tact. Granted, with the incredibly low budget (inside production design is fine, the "outdoor" work is only a notch or two above the same way back on TV's "Space: 1999"), that was about the only wise way to proceed.
And I like the various thematic elements about solitude, corporate greed, the notion of what makes a person and so much more that's addressed at various points or throughout the film. Then there's the interesting side note that Jones just so happens to be the son (a.k.a. Zowie) of David Bowie who once had several songs about an astronaut named Major Tom, all of which would have been quite slick had "Space Oddity" played at the end here.
Granted that might have worked better in concept than execution, but I guess that would be appropriate as the same holds true for most of the film. With some more refining on the script side and perhaps a little more budget money thrown at the effects (or simply jettisoning any lunar surface views outside the mining outpost), this could have been a small classic and decent throwback to sci-fi the way they used to make it. It's not bad, it's just frustrating when any number of fixes -- some small, some needing a bit more involved surgery -- could have made it so much better. "Moon" rates as a 5 out of 10.
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