I finally got a chance to see Moon a few nights ago. I’ve been excited to see it for a few months now, and it finally came to a theater in town.
Here’s the preview:
Here’s the synopsis:
Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the end of his contract with Lunar. He’s been a faithful employee for 3 long years. His home has been Selene, a moon base where he has spent his days alone, mining Helium 3. The precious gas holds the key to reversing the Earth’s energy crisis. Isolated, determined and steadfast, Sam has followed the rulebook obediently and his time on the moon has been enlightening, but uneventful. The solitude has given him time to reflect on the mistakes of his past and work on his raging temper. He does his job mechanically, and spends most of his available time dreaming of his imminent return to Earth, to his wife, young daughter and an early retirement. But 2 weeks shy of his departure from Selene, Sam starts seeing things, hearing things and feeling strange. — IMDB
I know, I know. You don’t come here to read my opinions on pop culture – you want embarrassing stories about bug infestations and fictional musical-instrument-toilets. Sorry. When something so amazing, so completely magical comes along that it can’t be ignored, I have to discuss it.
So anyway, Moon. I was really excited about this movie; it’s been getting really good reviews, the preview was pretty sweet, the premise is really intriguing to me, and and soundtrack is by Clint Mansell, who always seems to do a solid job (he also did the soundtracks for Pi, Requiem For a Dream, Smokin’ Aces and The Wrestler, among others.)
Anyway, after seeing the movie, I was a little bit disappointed. I had to spend some time thinking about it, because anytime I go to see a movie that I’m really excited about, I tend to have it worked up in my head enough that I’m let down when I actually see it no matter how good it is.
I think there was some of that in play; After some reflection, I think the movie was better than I originally thought. I really liked the premise, I loved the atmosphere, and it was nice to see a robot assistant in a science fiction movie that wasn’t trying to turn on its master for a change of pace.
Despite all of that, there were a couple of things about the movie that I found a little bit frustrating.
First of all, there’s a pretty heavy duty plot twist in the movie. I won’t spoil it, even though I’m guessing that you can figure out what it is from the preview. The twist is revealed maybe a third of the way into the movie, which it fine. The movie is really interesting up to this point. Unfortunately, I started to feel a little bit like the movie had shot it’s load too soon, because there was a large chunk in the middle that felt slowed down and stretched out. Things picked up speed again at the end, but after the twist is revealed, you figure out what’s going on, you know what has been happening on the base this entire time, and you have a pretty good idea of how the characters in the movie are going to deal with it, but the movie keeps stretching it out for what seems longer than necessary.
Exacerbating my frustration with this was the fact that I felt like there were plenty of interesting things they could’ve done with that time in the middle. The movie’s twist leads to a very stunning realization for the protagonist, and I would’ve liked it if the movie would’ve explored how he felt about what he had found out a little bit more than it did. This turned out to be the most frustrating part of the movie for me: despite spending most of the movie getting nailed with bombshell after bombshell about his life, you never really get an opportunity to find out the effect that it has on Sam.
It’s strange, too, because other than sharing the screen a little bit with a friendly helper robot, Sam is really the only character in the film. Despite the fact that every scene of the movie features him, I never really ended up feeling like I knew him very well.
Take a quick look at that synopsis again. If you see the movie, all of the information about the setting is pretty clear; you know that he’s working alone on a base mining Helium 3 and he’s two weeks away from returning home.
It’s a whole lot harder to glean any information about the main character, however. After watching the actual movie, I couldn’t have told you that Sam had found his time on the base enlightening, or that he had been reflecting on his mistakes and working on his raging temper.
Maybe I’m a little autistic, or just to dense to pick up on the kind of subtlety the movie used, but this was a problem for me throughout. It was really interesting, but when Sam explored the room with the pod that workers used to get back to Earth, or discovered the secret room under the base, or watched the video recordings of the people who had worked on the base before him, or when he managed to contact his family on Earth, I constantly found myself thinking “I wonder how Sam feels about this?” And never feeling like I ever got a very clear answer.
Despite those complaints, I still think it’s a really good film. I would absolutely reccommend it. There’s a lot to like about it, and it’s definitely worth seeing, especially if you like independant Sci-Fi. I just wish that by the time the credits rolled, I would’ve felt a little bit more like I knew what the guy I had been watching for the last hour and a half thought about all of it.