Space Oddity rivets the attention

MOON (2009)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Moon" is an odd duck of a movie, so relentlessly sad and despairing that it might make sentimentalists crazy. Of course, "Moon" is also a throwback to a bygone era, the 1970's sci-fi flicks that told stories in imaginative and unusual ways in unusual settings. Yep, some of them had sad endings too.

Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell, an astronaut at a lunar station, and his three year stint of sending canisters of helium-3 back to Earth (our planet is in worse shape than it is now) and tracking harvesters, which extract helium from moon rocks that provide pollution-free power back to our home planet, is coming to an end. This job looks quite boring and he is the sole occupant of this station. Sam does talk to computers, specifically a talkative, sometimes intrusive HAL-9000-type computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) who is his eyes and ears to any transmission sent or received to Earth, including video messages sent by Sam's wife and daughter. But something is happening to Sam. He hallucinates and thinks a girl is in the station that could be his daughter. A video transmission is apparently tampered with. When he investigates problems with the harvester in his rover, there is an accident and somehow Sam is dragged back to the infirmary. How is this possible if GERTY is always inside the station? Is there someone else on the moon?

I rather not give away too much information but, suffice to say, there may be more going on the station than Sam Bell is aware of. The trick in a film dealing with loneliness (and what can be more lonely than space?) is finding the right actor to keep us motivated and compelled. Debuting director Duncan Jones could not have chose anyone better than Sam Rockwell, an underappreciated actor whose offbeat nature keeps us guessing and wondering. Rockwell doesn't have a predictable bone in his range of mannerisms, and supplies just enough credibility and compassion to make us care for his plight. There is also some business about how Lunar Industries, a fictional company, is implementing cost-cutting measures to have their lucrative business kept afloat without losing a dime. I will not reveal how this is happening but I can say Rockwell and especially GERTY keeps us wondering. Once the truth is out, the film grows more despairing and more thoughtful.

"Moon" reminds me a lot of "Silent Running," a highly offbeat sci-fi picture from the 70's that starred Bruce Dern. Whereas "Silent Running" dealt with environmental concerns, "Moon" deals with the fragility of humanity in intriguing ways, and the dire cost of outsourcing jobs. I can't say more than that, or maybe I have said too much already. GERTY might have recommended keeping this review down to a single paragraph to avoid potential spoilers. If you like sci-fi films that deal with ideas, put your thinking caps on and you will have quite an experience with "Moon." I am sure GERTY would agree.