"You've been up here too long, man. You've lost your marbles."
Moon is movie director/writer Duncan Jones' first stand alone movie. It takes place in what I assume to be the near future where Sam Bell, an astronaut played by Sam Rockwell, works alone on a space station on the moon. He has signed a three year contract with a company that extracts a powerful energy source from the dark side of the moon called Helium3, and his job is basically to go out to some harvesting machines and collect a canister of Helium3 every day, and then ship it back to earth. Sam's only company is a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey called GERTY, so needless to day, he's very, very lonely. The movie takes place near the end of his three year trip to the moon, and Sam is beginning to wear out from being completely isolated for so long. He misses his wife and daughter and he's sick of eating prepared meals from small plastic bag, so when something strange happens on the space station, the lonely astronaut begins to question his mental stability.
This indie sci-fi/drama surprised me. I bought it on Blu-Ray because it was cheap, and no way had i expected to like it as much as I did. First of all I have a hard time believing how a movie that is made with a budget of 5 million dollars can look as a beautiful as Moon does. The atmospheric shots of whats going on outside the space station looks gorgeous in particular, but everything else, from the actual station to the astronaut suits and the technology in and around the base looks totally authentic and realistic. Watching Sam drive across the lunar surface in a moon jeep wearing sunglasses while a beautiful score blurs in the background was strangely fascinating, and looking at the earth and the stars in the distance while absorbing the loneliness and isolation that the character is subject to got me emotionally invested in the plot. Moon is very well directed, and I can't wait to see what Duncan Jones comes up with next.
Being one of those movies that completely centers around a single person, the actor that plays that person obviously has to be good. Luckily for Moon, Sam Rockwell knocks it out of the park. His performance is solid and trustable, and he does a great job of displaying what being completely isolated for more than a thousands days does to a human being. When his character experiences difficult situations and has to make even more difficult decisions, Rockwell manages to display the emotions someone would experience in such a situation nicely. Moon feels really realistic, and you truly believe that something similar to what Sam Bell is put through could happen in real life.
Being the only real supporting character, I honestly would have liked GERTY to be voiced by someone else than Kevin Spacey. Because he's a well known actor and therefore is easily recognizable, i kept thinking of Kevin Spacey talking into a microphone every time GERTY was speaking. This resulted in me never really believing that that GERTY was a real robot with intentions of his own. An unknown or less known person would have worked better for me. Over all I did like the robot as a character though, the best part being a small screen displaying a smiley face that changes according to GERTY's mood, even though I found it creepy at times as well. Something about the way the face would look completely indifferent when GERTY is seen alone kinda freaked me out. Whether or not this was intentional I can't say, maybe I'm just easily freakoutable.
The most compelling element of this sci-fi movie is sadly the thing that many people will dislike the most about it as well. What I'm talking about is the haunting atmosphere, which is what i loved the most about Moon. You have to let yourself plunge into the isolated and hopeless reality of Sam Bell to truly enjoy this movie, but if you do, I promise that Moon will take you on a beautiful, haunting, indulging and immersing journey into space and the human psyche. It's a subtle movie without action and explosions, yet it's still rich on suspense and drama if you have the ability to put yourself into the the situation of Sam Bell. After the movie had ended I couldn't stop thinking about what I would do if i was in main characters shoes, and I have a feeling that this is exactly what the director aimed to do. Moon is beautiful, well acted, thought provoking and definitely worth buying on BluRay. (5/6)
Moon IMDb page here
Moon trailer here
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