Hawkeye Reviews: Moon
***Contains minor plot spoilers. If you haven’t seen the film yet and want to view it without knowing anything then you might want to skip this review.***
There are obvious comparisons to be made between Duncan Jones’s “Moon” and Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey” such as a mellow-sounding robot with unclear motives and a similar-looking space station. However, the comparisons end there as “Moon” goes in a completely different direction with its story.
Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an engineer who is fulfilling a three-year contract to mine a new form of energy on the moon which is basically the sun’s energy trapped in lunar rocks. His only companion is a robot named Gerty (Voice of Kevin Spacey) who is there to help Sam with whatever he might need. While going out to one of the mining machines to collect the energy substance, he accidentally crashes his vehicle into the machine.
He wakes up in the infirmary and is told by Gerty that he is not allowed to go outside. However, determined to check on one of the machine that has broken down, he creates an excuse for Gerty to let him outside. Sam explores the crash site where his lunar vehicle still sits and is quite surprised when he discovers that there is another Sam inside.
This may seem spilerish, but it is really what the movie is about. Many have said that this film is about a man living on the moon, mining rock, and dealing with loneliness, which is certainly part of it, but not nearly enough to give an idea of where the movie goes. That being said, I wish that it had gone a little further and explored the ideas it brings up more.
That’s not to say that it’s a bad film. The story on its own is enough to recommend it. It’s just that it brings up certain ideas and doesn’t really talk about them that much, and instead, goes through certain stages while still avoiding discussion. The story, however, remains compelling throughout and makes the short 90-minute running time fly by in an instant.
The stages involved are basically emotions and states of mind. At first, there is sadness because Sam is so alone. Then there is confusion, anger, and frustration over the discovery of a second Sam. From here, it becomes a sort of mystery as the characters become determined to figure out the current state of things, which leads into the third act where things change again.
A big reason for the success of the story is that Sam Rockwell’s performance(s) are absolutely stunning. He has to play two sides of the same coin and is able to give two distinct personalities to these two characters while still remaining very similar. He is able to flawlessly perform scenes with himself, never missing a beat, and creates characters that we come to care about.
It’s important that he does this because so much of this film works purely on the basis of us caring about their fates in the third act. It wraps up in a somewhat perfect manner, but not exactly in a way that we might expect. It’s one of those films that makes you think it’s going to wrap up in a certain way but then last-minute events take it to another perfect wrap up.
Like all good science fiction films, it doesn’t spell everything out for us and leaves us with certain questions, not only about what will become of the characters, but larger questions that could be a whole new area of exploration should Jones decide to make a follow up to this film one day. Even though it seems like it ends perfectly, there is a part of it that is rather ambiguous. I’m sure Sam has plenty of his own questions, and he knows just where the answers lie.
3/4 stars.
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