Moon (review)

First of all, I completely agree on everything you said about Sam Rockwell. He was magnificent in this film that could've easily sucked with a less talented and engaging leading man.

I also agree that it was nice to see a film that managed to surprise me. I have seen way too many sci-fi films so I thought I knew everything, but the general feeling of not knowing what's going to happen next was pretty refreshing and made the movie all the more wonderful.

so... better than Splice then ...

I really regretted not getting to see this in the theatre. I will have to get my hands on it and watch it.

I will just say it: Moon rocks.

It's in my Netflix queue. Looking forward to it.

I wonder how many reviews Mr. Jones had to endure that contained the phrase "space oddity?" (Thanks for not going there, MaryAnn.)

This is a very cool and smart sci-fi movie mystery without having to go the Pandorum route.

Man, I had to go look up the title Pandorum from my Netflix DVD watched queue, as I kept thinking the character played by Dennis Quaid was actually Sam Neill and could not find the film on imdb.

Great movie! Easily one of the best of last year. Way better than shit like The Blind Side, and yet that gets nominated and this doesn't. Sam was amazing in this role(roles?). I even really dug the use of miniatures in lieu of CG. Classic, smart, sci-fi. Like you said...Perfect.

Moon is a fantastic film - I was never so disappointed as when my local theater in the middle of Hicksville decided not to show it last year.

Excellent review as always.

So glad you finally reviewed this! Moon is one of my favorite films and Rockwell's performance never fails to utterly blow my mind. I can't even imagine what filming this was like...

I was so disappointed with this film, because it's right down my alley.

I agree with the first part of your review - the fact that this is low-budget, close-quarters sci fi cannot be praised enough.

SPOILERS

But the narrative was just...frustrating. We were told the solution to the 'mystery' about 35 minutes in. And then simply had to wait for the rest of the film to play out. I kept waiting for some sort of twist - thinking surely this isn't all there is to it - but there wasn't.

You're not the only one Stuart. The ideas in this movie have been explored to much greater depths in science fiction stories written decades ago. The acting was excellent, but like you, I kept waiting for the movie to take the concept somewhere interesting or unpredictable. It ended up being a huge letdown for me and my wife, and both of us love quality science fiction. Sure, it's more thoughtful than most modern sci-fi movies, but that bar has been set at subterranean levels for a long time. Fifty years ago, this might have been a somewhat interesting screenplay. Today, the average teenager thinks through more interesting plots while daydreaming in high school bio. So, nice execution, a great acting exercise, but the story it tells was not really worth the effort. Oh well, hopefully Inception will be more substantial and surprising.

Great review. What I most loved about this movie was Rockwell's acting. His reaction to the, uh, situation he finds himself in wasn't histrionics but a quiet introspection and perhaps sadness. We got to watch him act from inside himself and it was fascinating.

Regarding what Stuart and amanohyo are saying: one of the best things about this movie for me (and one of the aspects that stil stays with me) is its defiance of many well worn sci-fi tropes from the last 40 years or so.
There's some slight misdirection at the start (which is earned since there are perspective changes involved). You can figure out the basic plot fairly easily, or at least I did, and tonally I had a good sense of where it might go (or thought it ought to go) and I was happy as hell it stuck to its guns.

There's no "twist" as such. No great mystery where you're with the Sam's at every revelation, mostly you can figure the important detals yourself (and if you look 'younger Sam' figures it all out almost right away himself). Instead at every turn where it could ramp itself up the film gently directs you to pay more attention to the smaller moments. Usually ones that have regretfully already gone by.
Seriously, I can't remember a film where, on first viewing, little touches made me want to go back a few scenes and watch it again differently right away, because I was watching the wrong movie. Waiting for it to meet my Twilight-Zone-meets-Robert-McKee-ish movie going expectations. And that was the point, I think. If you're watching the "plot" above anything else you're not really watching it.

Sam Rockwell was excellent, but I was hugely disappointed by Moon. Everything came so simple in film:
Sam 2: Hey, uh, Sam 1. D'you reckon we're clones?
Sam 1: Don't be ridiculous.
Sam 2: Well, I reckon there's a secret area of the base where the clones are stored and then woken up.
25 minutes later...
Sam 1: Hey look! Here's the secret area with the clones!
Later on...
Sam 2: Hey, Sam 1. I reckon they're jamming our communications with some kind of signal.
10 minutes later, on the lunar surface in a transport vehicle...
Sam 2: Hey look! There's the radio tower jamming our signals!

I thought the film tied some lose ends up too nicely. The most interesting scene was when Original Sam called what he thought was his own home's phone number and heard the real Sam Bell's voice. Did Real Sam voluntarily give his DNA for cloning? Was it taken from him against his will? That's the only idea the film left open. (I didn't want that answered, though. Would bring it too close to The Sixth Day.) Didn't like that they felt it necessary to provide a montage of audio at the end about the fallout with Sam 2's arrival on Earth, though. And also, if the company didn't want the clones to find out the truth, why did GERTY help Sam? Couldn't they have easily programmed GERTY to prevent him from discovering the truth at any cost?

MaryAnn, two comments about your review. One it's excellent and two, it's about time. :) I watched Moon on an overseas flight last year and loved it. It too, reminded me of a good Twilight Zone episode. It was certainly one of the best movies of last year, which for me is either Moon or Star Trek. ST is a totally different kind of SciFi because last years ST is more of a big adventure set in space which I enjoyed a lot. Moon, however, used SciFi to explore some great questions about humanity, kind of like some old ST episodes. I give Moon 5 stars.

This movie made me want a semi-intelligent (read: not MIB 2 or Ghostbusters 2) sequel to Galaxy Quest.

And also, if the company didn't want the clones to find out the truth, why did GERTY help Sam? Couldn't they have easily programmed GERTY to prevent him from discovering the truth at any cost?

Well probably not actually. That's one of the more 'real sci-fi' aspects of the film. I read up on this stuff yonks ago. I'm not sure I remember it very well or could explain it in any case, but much thought on what real AIs will actually be like usually doesn't have them at all like the ones traditionally found in the movies.

Indeed 'programming' isn't a very good word for it, in the sense we usually use (that of sets of fairly rigid instructions). Something reactive must have fairly flexible and generic sense purpose or behaviour. It's bottom up rather than top down. And that's just the way they'll have to be to become any sort of analogue for what we understand as 'intelligence'. (I told you I wasn't very good at explaining it).

In any case, crazy robots and HAL scenarios are very much part of the thinking and have been for a long time. A construct designed to care for your clone supply also having the capacity to kill them if necessary is just asking for trouble. GERTY's job is to care for, in a sensitive and reactive way, an enourmously more complicated creature. Achieving that effectively would be enough.

AIs of this sort will be very hard things to get our head around when they show up, by most theories. They'll be like super smart, articulate, emotionally broken babies or house pets. A combination of traits that completely defies all our human/animal relating capabilities.

I recognised a bit of GERTY from the literature I read back in the day (probably in some Daniel Dennet or Wired or something) and apparently artifical intelligence was Duncan Jones' thesis topic at university, so it figures Moon is more up to date than most.

Story wise GERTY isn't there to be Checkov's Robot or whatever but a contrast to the human relationships in the film (I think anyway. And more besides, of course).

Oh, what a gorgeous and sad little film this is.

If Sam Rockwell doesn't get an Oscar nod...grrr. The music, the cinematography, the design - wonderful.

Oh, what a gorgeous and sad little film this is.

If Sam Rockwell doesn't get an Oscar nod...grrr. The music, the cinematography, the design - wonderful.

Unfortunately this was first released in June 2009, so his time's already passed.

There was actually a pretty big campaign from the geek community to get Rockwell an Oscar nod, but Sony Classics decided to push An Education instead.

What disappoints me is seeing people say they were disappointed by this movie, and only because they incorrectly categorized it as the sort of mystery tale that they assume should end with a shocking plot twist.

This is much like emerging from a fine restaurant which has just served an excellent, satisfying gourmet meal, and overhearing nearby patrons complain because nobody set their desserts on fire.

I'm not going to put a big giant spoiler warning here, because I consider this movie well worth an intelligent and thoughtful viewer's time, even if they already know every major plot point. However, I'll leave this quieter warning for those who bother to read carefully.

Many vital questions are left unanswered, but this is not a flaw. It is necessary to the narrative.

Not least among those questions, why the 3-year life span of the clones? Many reviewers seem to assume this limit is inherent to the cloning method used, but that is never stated. The clones' rapid breakdown and collapse after 3 years could be caused by something in the lunar environment, or it could be deliberately triggered by something in the life support system. A clone allowed to return to Earth might die after 3 years, but might also be able to live out the rest of a normal human lifespan, just like anybody else.

The important thing is that neither possibility changes the moral dimensions of the situation. It's wrong to intentionally deceive a person about the meaning and purpose of their life, even if their life is short; and even if they are effectively immortal.

Which brings me to another key point in the narrative, when Sam says to GERTY: "We're not programmed. We're people." Some might assume the word "we" refers to the multiple clones, but I think it's clearly meant to include GERTY as well. This is why Sam then removes the "kick me" sign from GERTY's back.

By going against the orders of his corporate masters to help Sam, GERTY proved himself to be a person, and earned the respect a person deserves. Even one who happens to live inside a machine.

The sublime beauty of that moment, along with so many other things done so well, earns this movie the right to be defended when someone glibly labels it an "acting exercise." It is so much more than that. I can only pity any viewer who was incapable of seeing its depth.

And I say all this as someone who usually hates this type of movie. Too many of them stray from "cautionary tale" into being rabidly anti-science and anti-technology. Moon avoids those tired and lazy tropes. It poses vital questions about how technology should be used, without ever casting technology itself as the villain.