Ground control to director Jones. Can you hear me? You've made a good 'un.

Rating: 7/10 (12 December 2009)

Moon quite wonderfully captures the sheer vastness of science fiction and yet works as equally well, if not better as, a stripped down and simplistic study of the human condition. Moon is a project all about the sorts of themes, ideas and emotions that have been, and will always be, acquitted with humankind; whatever the year and wherever the locale. On this occasion, the emotions and thematic elements of isolation and loneliness are explored under the watchful eye of the science-fiction genre and unravel on Planet Earth's sole Moon. And then there's the word 'Moon', merely four letters long but used to describe something so big; so exciting; so mysterious and so seemingly far away. Jupier get something ridiculous like sixty of the damn things, we only get the one.
Here, the titular satellite orbiting our planet is used as a backdrop for some rather humbling scenes revolving around raw human emotion; some confusion and ambiguity as the lines between drama and horror are blurred as well as a scathing attack on the working commercial world in which we live and work. "Where are we now?" asks the voice in the opening scene, a montage of the vast technological developments of our time. Where indeed are we now? Going by both Moon's content and overall study, the developments over time in regards to modernity have aided those big, evil corporations by expanding into space and putting people through the proverbial sausage factory without them even realising. Without spoiling anything too greatly: "Where are we now?" – technology and the ability to travel into space and set up on the Moon has advanced in the world of this film, but the same old humankind ideologies of working for a set period; doing your time; outliving your usefulness and then being 'replaced' seem to have stuck.
You get that feeling writer/director Duncan Jones identifies his setting as a wide, eye-opening and somewhat beautiful place if you looked at it right, and yet deliberately keeps everything restricted; locked down and focused on those within the small space centre in which most of the events unfold. Jones' ability to cover so much ground and yet essentially keep his characters within the parameters of half a dozen rooms is extraordinary, yet again acting as an example that sees people and characters journey long and far within their minds and yet only ever really cover a physical distance of a few dozen feet – let's say half a mile when they're outside on the Moon's surface.
Moon sees a certain American astronaut by the name of Sam (Rockwell) suffer, struggle and eventually come to limp his way through what can only really be described as some sort of tour of duty, on the Moon, working for a large company called Lunar Industries - the word 'luna', of which, is Spanish for 'Moon'. His role sees him wake up; do whatever he needs to initially do; talk to the base's on board computer, named GERTY (Spacey), about this and that before spending not-all-that-much-time extracting 'Helium-3' from the Moon's soil so that it may be used back on Earth for certain purposes. For all the technology; for all the awe of supposedly travelling to the Moon and being situated on the Moon for 'x' number of months, the job boils down to that of a farmer, or that of a bean counter trained to push a few buttons and shift incoming 'goods'. This changes, however, a while into the film when a crash in a vehicle outside on the surface kicks off some rather strange events.
It is again to Jones' great credit that he keeps the momentum and the intensity going throughout the build up to a rather dramatic unveiling later on. I think it's fair to say at this point that a second Sam turns up for whatever reason, but the film draws us into the first Sam's mindset so much that interpretation and guess-work will still play a part on the viewer's behalf when sitting down to watch it. Sam comes across as weak, soft-bodied even, in his mannerisms and general behaviour when hallucinations of women sitting in chairs and eerie images of himself decked out in full astronaut gear reaching up from the bottom of a bed become apparent. He watches video messages from back home; they glitch and skip a beat - is something up? Is he going mad? Is the machinery wearing out, or is HE beginning to wear out to some degree. Moon draws on inspiration from some pretty far reaching and understandably heavy weight science fiction films from decades gone by; drawing on inspiration from and paying homage to, but never feeling like trying to go higher than. Jones knows the level he's at here, and with this as his rather accomplished debut, anticipating his next venture will be a joy.