Intriguing and thoughtful sci fi film for a niche audience

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2010)

This film is slow and brooding, so therefore not exciting for all viewers. Any full-length feature film with only one actor is bound to have limited appeal. However, sci fi fans will tend to love it because it has some solid ideas in it, though they are slow to develop. But sci fi fans have patience, they will wait for something that is really good. And as this film moves along, deeply intriguing things do emerge, like butterflies struggling to emerge from their chrysalises, and taking their time about it. An unknown English director named Duncan Jones has made this German production in the English language. The only other live actor on screen apart from Sam Rockwell, who plays two identical men, is the computer, whose silky voice is recorded by Kevin Spacey, and it is very much a 'son of HAL'. The story concerns a mining station on the moon, which is manned by a single person, Sam Bell, who is played by Rockwell. He has an accident when driving in a heavy vehicle outside his base, but is rescued by another man. That man, however, turns out to be his identical twin. It is highly sophisticated the way Jones handles this situation. The two men, instead of confronting one another, try to ignore one another, which is not normal. But then they themselves are not normal, as we soon discover. It becomes obvious that one of them is a clone, and one is real. But which is which? Later we are shocked to realize that they are both clones, and that the real Sam Bell left the base many years earlier. Both men become sullen and introverted upon realizing that they are clones of Sam Bell rather than the real Sam Bell. A clone has a lifetime of three years, and then another is taken out of storage and brought to life. The two clones become desperate to search for the 'hidden room' which they feel certain must exist inside their base. This stirs psychological responses in viewers, because as Carl Jung and others have so often pointed out, unknown or concealed rooms in houses and buildings as experienced in dreams, or even in reality for that matter, psychologically represent untapped portions of our consciousness, and symbolize our unexploited potentials and abilities. Eventually, the 'hidden room' is indeed found, but it is much more than a room, it is an entire subterranean level of the main base structure. And it contains row upon row of clones. The two clones then decide to vivify a third clone. Meanwhile, a 'rescue mission' from Earth is about to arrive, and the two clones think it is coming to kill them because they have learned too much. Obviously, the commercial company owning the mining station had decided long ago to save money by not having real people running the mining stations, but to economize by using clones instead. The pathos of the film is intense when the clones, who have had the memories of the original Sam Bell implanted in their brains, realize that the beautiful young wife whom they both 'remember' died long ago, and the charming little daughter whom they 'remember' as a toddler is now a teenager, and that her dad, the real Sam Bell is living happily at home with her on earth. They discover all this by TV link and then take steps regarding their situation. The drama of this film builds slowly but surely. It is paced languidly, however, and is thus the antithesis of a Hollywood sci fi film. There are no explosions, no wham bang, nobody gets shot. Isn't it amazing how a film can be made these days without non-stop violence? You might be tempted to think that humans had finally become civilized and could stop killing each other for long enough at least to watch a movie.