Solid sci-fi debut

Rating: 8/10 (1 January 2013)

This was the feature directorial debut for Duncan (Zowie Haywood) Jones, formerly known as Zowie Bowie and son of David Bowie, and was shot with a relatively modest budget of $5m. That pushed the seven star rating I would normally have given this film up to an eight.
The story is set in the future and follows Sam Bell who is a miner approaching the end of a three-year contract working entirely alone at a lunar mining base. He has only an intelligent robot called GERTY (remember HAL?) for company, plus occasional video messages from his wife on earth. He is cracking up from loneliness and looking forward to leaving in a few weeks when a accident while working sets an unexpected series of events in motion.
Jones has clearly tried hard to evoke sci-fi classics from the 1960s up to the 1980s, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Silent Running (1971), and Alien (1979). That is visible in the writing, with the futuristic sci-fi context being used only to support the story rather than being allowed to take over as so often happens nowadays with special effects such a focus in sci-fi. It is also visible in the cinematography which uses the enclosed spaces of the lunar mining base to great effect and the colouring work done on the movie has given a real retro feel to the images. Gavin Rothery who worked on visual effects for the movie has some fascinating background on all of this on his blog at http://www.gavinrothery.com/moon-blog-index . All of this works really well and is impressive given the limited resources.
Where the movie goes wrong for me is that after a great build-up, it seems to fizzle out in the last quarter. There are many questions created in the mind of the viewer but never answered, and suggestions made that are not followed up, and many possibilities for deeper explorations of the reasons, meanings, effects of the issues raised that are never pursued. And so it leaves and unsatisfying taste in your mouth. Perhaps the story should have been paced differently to keep the big reveal of Sam's mystery until closer to the end? Or maybe the pacing was right and we just needed more depth of detail towards the end, which could have been dropped due to the tight budget of course.
Anyhow, this is on the whole an enjoyable, thought-provoking and solid sci-fi flick and I'll be watching out for Duncan Jones' next feature.
p.s. Since I've focused only on Jones, I should say that Sam Rockwell was excellent as the one proper character (Sam Bell) in the movie, and GERTY is ably voiced by Kevin Spacey also.