Moon

[July 1st, 2009]

Since Duncan Jones, the director of the unusually satisfying sci-fi film Moon, is the son of David Bowie, it’s probably best to get all of the bad jokes out of the way up front. Ready? Moon is a space oddity. Its plot is ziggy, and caked with stardust. It’s about a starman, waiting in the sky. He’d like to come and meet us, but I think he’ll blow our minds. Freak out in a moonage daydream. Oh yeah.

I’m very sorry about that.

There’s actually not much I can safely reveal about the movie without ruining it; in fact, if you haven’t seen the trailer, you should head straight to the theater before you accidentally encounter any twists. It’s hardly even fair to call the upheavals “twists”—Jones’ direction is so economical, and the story so direct, that the surprises aren’t M. Night Shyamalan abracadabra but the launching site for speculation on how it might feel to experience such things. Mostly it would feel mighty lonely.

What I can say is that Sam Rockwell is a mine operator shaving helium-3 off the lunar surface for an energy company that cares deeply about the environment but so little about Sam that they’ve left him for three years with only the voice of Kevin Spacey for company. (Spacey takes the form of a sluggish robot that’s an open homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey; it communicates as HAL 9000 would have if Stanley Kubrick had discovered emoticons.) Exhausted and a little unhinged, Rockwell’s character starts as a fine channel for the actor’s sleepy aimlessness, until he develops facets that allow for a quiet tour de force. Rarely has a performer made so much hay out of talking to himself.

The movie is in and out in 97 minutes, and what sticks afterward—and rattles around, aching, for days—isn’t the ideas (which are no great shakes, really) but the full emotional gravity Moon gives them. Jones’ debut suggests that he is the rare director who lets his protagonist figure things out as fast or faster than the audience. He understands that while Sam Rockwell may be living in someone else’s shadow, the movie is his world, and we’re just living through him. Which brings to mind a line, not by David Bowie, about some places being nice to visit. R.