j* Movie Reviews 2019

Moon (2009)

Cabin fever, lunacy and doppelganging in a lunar donga.

It was cool to get to see this on a big screen as part of The Star Theatre's Moon Film Festival. Always fun to see older movies big again. And I have seen it once before, but haven't reviewed it, and it is probably worth some words.

The basic premise is our guy Sam (Sam Rockwell) is the only human manning a mining station on the far side of the moon. He hangs out with rather pleasant and emoticonal AI called Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Even just here you might be entertained by the parallels between the actors names and their roles... Rockwell is mining the moon, Spacey is an AI in space...

Anyway, the three year moon-mining contract is nearly up so Sam is getting ready to return to Earth, his wife and daughter. But then things go a bit weird, a bit pear-shaped and before he knows it he's hanging out with his doppelganger and they're both trying to figure out what's happening and who's the real Sam. Doppelgangers in space! On the full moon! In a haunted donga! Talk about a sci-fi gone fully gothic. For that is what this manages effortless, a full on gothic tale set in space. Complete with visions and controlling figures and entrapment and more.

This has a lot of interesting things to say about alternate lives lived, I guess. But more than that, I think it makes quite a feature of showcasing the concept of "your life" and how the *you* that you are now can be quite different than the *you* that you were three years ago. There's a bit of a sliding doors here in terms of changed moments meaning changed opportunities. There's the idea of listening to your past self, but doing more. It's kind of literally about the conversations we have with ourselves and how we develop and support our senses of identity when a different self confronts us. And it's kind of nice how calmly the Sam's interact.

It's also got a great sci-fi slant on conspiracy and controversy. It asks us, again, what's happening on the "dark side" of the moon - which we must always interpret in the sense of *dark* as in unseen and far, for it too gets lit. I loved the visions of the great big mining harvesters ploughing up the surface in ugly scars, something that would (I presume) never be allowed on the near-side. But more than that, when commercial enterprises operate so far removed from oversight... how far will they go to maintain profits? What sorts of nefariousness will they get up to?

Considering that this movie is pretty much 100% just Sam Rockwell acting it does an amazing job. In some ways it's a real fore-runner to that small-cast high-concept stuff that's been really ushered in by the Netflix-et al era. For a slow and kind of breathy exploration of cabin fever, isolation and the human condition, Moon is pretty damn great. It knows what it wanted to do and does it. Excellent shots of moon rovers and harvesters and a very convincing space-donga.

J* gives it 4 stars.