Moon - The Film Review

Rating: 8/10 (29 September 2009)

I went into 'Moon' not knowing a single thing about what I was going to see, other than that it was about a man who lives by himself on the moon. If you think you might watch a film like that, you may want to stop reading now – I reckon it was much better for being unspoiled. But then, what film isn't? It's a free country, so you can do what you like. Read on...I'll keep the spoilers mild, and you might get one or two laughs.
For 'proper' film fans, 'Moon' is a real feast. It looks great, and the atmosphere (no pun intended) is bang on. It's deep, serious science fiction; sci-fi for the mind, sci-fi that's more about the human condition than cool space ships shooting at things. At first, it put me in mind of 2001, but that wore off, and there's no real connection. He does talk to the computer, and that's something I wanted to discuss... for some reason, overly nice robots always creep me out. Even 'Furby' used to give me chills, and so did 'Gerty', the robot here, at first, with his slightly-too-wide smiley face, and other creepily innocent expressions. (He even cries at one point, which did make me feel a little strange.) But amazingly, by the end of the film, I had got over my robot prejudice, and actually started to like him.
Besides Gerty, the majority of the film was a one-man show, with Sam Rockwell putting in a meteoric (no pun intended) performance. And here come the spoilers...the film is about clones. The first Sam gets injured when fooling about in a lunar rover, and when he returns to the base, it has simply grown a new Sam to replace him. At this point, Sam (the actor) goes from being in every scene of the movie – itself a huge challenge – to being in every scene of the movie twice. Towards the end, he even appears a third time. He has such a difficult job here, playing all the characters, with no chance to react to the opposing performance... it's an actor's dream and nightmare, rolled into one.
But it really does work, and in retrospect that's a surprise – and a huge achievement. All the interactions with himself were totally believable; I'd quite like to see Rockwell win the Oscar for 'best actor,' and 'best supporting actor.' The opening credits told me Kevin Spacey (no pun intended) was in it too, and I spent the entire film trying to spot him...only to find out later that he was the voice of the computer.
It's quite a serious film, but did get some laughs from my 20-strong Scarborough audience, not least when during the 'turn off your phone' message someone's phone rang, and the man answered it by saying 'I can't talk now, I'm in the cinema! I'm watching 'Moon!'" Sam's choice of alarm clock song got a chuckle first time round, and a bigger one the second time, with its already ironic meaning turned around in deliciously amusing fashion. There was also a scene straight out of something like 'High Fidelity', where original Sam is listening to 'Walkin' On Sunshine', and second Sam keeps turning it off, only to be ignored and have it resumed immediately. This did feel a little out of place in a serious sci-fi flick, though it did prove you don't need two people for a double act.
This is not going to be a five-star review, so I'd better get to the downside. I don't know if I was just having a stupid day, but I spent a good fifteen minutes feeling extremely confused. This was brought on by how casually the reveal of the clone is dealt with – when they first meet, original Sam just asks the other: 'hey...how's it going?' I didn't know if they thought clones were normal, or if one them actually was a different person who just looked similar. For a while I even thought the ominous 'countdown to rescue' that runs through two-thirds of the movie was actually a herald of something good happening. To be honest, I thought Kevin Spacey was going to turn up in a rescue ship, saving both of the Sams. I was wrong.
And, there's some weird apparitions early on, of what I think was a dark-haired woman, which weren't explained or even mentioned afterwards. Big spoiler alert now - It may have been his daughter, or the ghost of his wife, trying to stop the cloning madness, but I'm not really sure the supernatural was ever a theme. Maybe it was just to show us he was going a bit mad.
The ending was very different, an interesting technique where two months of story are mumbled to the audience in about five seconds. I only barely realised it was important to listen – though in fairness, the ending does fit in perfectly with what preceded it, and wasn't disappointing or predictable. I looked up what was said, and actually it was a satisfying conclusion.
The biggest laughs of all came when me and companions retired to the pub afterwards. The first song playing was 'Rocket Man' ('I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife'), immediately followed by '...ground control to Major Tom.' We asked the landlord if this was planned – if the pun was intended – but apparently it wasn't. I don't think he even knew Scarborough had a cinema. Anyway, this time I highly recommend a viewing of the film in question, and am proud to award it a lunariffic four out of five.