Rating: 8/10

Director: Duncan Jones
Writers: Duncan Jones (story), Nathan Parker (screenplay)
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey (voice)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

The famous tagline just isn’t true anymore. In space, someone can hear you scream – yourself.

Director Duncan Jones’ debut film is a finely-honed and intensely watchable one-man show that meditates on loneliness and the human condition, while also questioning the ultimate value of truth. It’s all big questions, but big questions done without being clunky, without hitting you over the head with their bigness. Big questions for a sci-fi film, to be sure, but MOON is not your ordinary sci-fi film.  It’s not an ordinary film at all.

Sam Rockwell is, hands down, my favorite actor working today – so the prospect of MOON has long thrilled me. There is no other actor that I would willingly watch alone on-screen for an upwards of an hour and a half. It’s the world’s biggest treat (and, uh, hello, MAJOR spoiler alert) that MOON is actually populated by two Sam Rockwells (in the role of two Sam Bells).

Sam Bell is an astronaut in a loose sense of the word – a star voyager. But Sam’s ship is the moon itself, and he’s been traveling around on it for three years, as a solitary miner on a base that operates as the center of operations for moving moon-excavators that harvest HE3 to power the world. The only other being on the moon base is robot GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), who continually reminds us that he is there to help Sam. GERTY likes to talk about feelings, and he expresses his own via an emoticon screen on his front display. It’s a lonely job, and in his last days at it, Sam begins feeling the effects of his isolation. He’s started seeing things, and he has begun acknowledging to his wife via satellite message (their live uplink is woefully, and suspiciously, unusable) that he’s been spending a lot of time talking to himself.

And then Sam has an accident, and everything changes utterly – including the fact that we subsequently end up with two Sams (hereafter referred to in this review as Sam 1 and Sam 2, just for ease).

Days after the accident, Sam 1 first encounters Sam 2. Sam 1’s reactions to this seemingly unfeasible turn of events might come across as strange at first blush. If this was another movie, this first encounter would probably be punctuated by lots yelling and jumping – I can perfectly visualize the nearly unconscious Sam 1 jumping off his infirmary bed and backing into a wall, yelling out a series of “whoa’s!” and “what’s?” But Sam 1 has been feeling his way through possible delusions for awhile now, so his reaction is rooted in his groggy reality – a dim acceptance, a vague wonder. As Sam 1 slowly comes to, he becomes all the more aware that he and Sam 2 don’t just look alike. Sam 2 seems uninterested, dismissive and almost bored.

And as days tick by, Sam 1 slowly starts to fade before our eyes. Sam 2 does not allow himself to fully grasp what is happening – because he is not watching someone else die, he is watching himself die. This is his destiny, and to acknowledge it is to seal it. One of the most satisfying moments of an already satisfying film takes place when Sam 2 unshackles himself from this looming destiny, bucking it without considering if he’ll ultimately start suffering from the same dire consequences. There is an expiration date on his head, but there is simply too much else to wonder about first.

What is the value of memory? In MOON, memory is what makes a person human. Without it, you might as well be a meaty clone, neatly sequestered in your own drawer with your very own Sam Bell Astronaut Accessory Pack™ to rest your head on, perpetually ready to be slid out and put to work. Having memories, even if they are not necessarily real, is what tethers Sam to the earth, a personal history that validates his entire existence. It’s when this is all questioned and turned on its head that MOON mines the deep emotions, makes the audience ask itself the big questions, and establishes itself as a truly fine film.

MOON also succeeds in technical aspects. Films that employ such a small cast often need to rely on the “performance” of many other elements that would typically only serve as background. Sam’s moon base plays a huge role – it represents a home that is not a home, a safe haven that is not safe at all, a structure that is somehow complicit in the lies Sam has been fed for three years. For a sci-fi flick, MOON had a relatively small budget of $5 million, which you wouldn’t know from the looks of the set. The moon base looks real (down to its realistic wear and tear). The moon terrain shots (done in miniature) look beautiful. The score complements the entire mood of the film. It’s all pitch perfect.

To say that MOON is an accomplishment for Jones is an understatement of galactic proportions. This is a film that would stand as a mark of achievement for any director, but as a first outing, it’s nothing short of stunning.

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