Moon2009

“I want to go home.” SPOILERS I was not expecting this to be such a tragedy. Really, I had no expectations except that it was Sam Rockwell in space. Unfortunately, I knew about the twist beforehand (unfortunately, I’m telling you there is a twist), but that was why I wanted to watch the movie anyways. I also never saw any marketing from when it was coming out, so maybe it’s not a twist at all.  But it made me make immediate Oblivion comparisons, though that is a much bigger movie where this film stays much more focused. Not that Oblivion is unfocused; it’s just a much larger narrative and world. Here, the only thing that matters is Sam Bell and his relationship with himself.  So, Sam Bell is on a three-year mission on the moon and only has two weeks left. He is there essentially as a repairman for these giant moon harvesters that turn moon rocks(?) into clean energy. Anyways, he’s been there for a long time, and it’s clearly starting to wear on him. And outside of receiving messages from his wife and his superiors on Earth, he has no communication or connection with the outside world.  And after a good amount of time watching him work and seeing his day-to-day life, we see him go out to repair one of the harvesters. And while he is attempting to board it, he crashes, destroying the harvester and his moon rover. He passes into unconsciousness.  He then wakes up back at base with no memory of the incident. When he asks Gerty (the base’s computer and his only companion) why one of the harvesters isn’t working, Gerty tells Sam that another team has been sent for to repair the harvester and that Sam must remain at the base. He tricks Gerty, leaves the base, and heads to the harvester. Where he finds the other moon rover and inside a body.  So this is the core of the movie. These two people that share the same memories wrestling with the reality of their existence. And the tragedy is clear. Sam 1 is the one who has been here the longest and the one that most deserves to go home, but the more he learns, the more he realizes he can never go home. And the movie ends with him volunteering to go back to the broken moon rover so that Sam 2 can escape.  Here is the unstated, implied tragedy. The reason why Sam is told his mission is for three years is because that is the entire lifetime of a clone before it starts to essentially decompose. So Sam 2, despite escaping the moon, still will never live a real life. And he can never live the life that he truly wants to live. He can never be Sam Bell on Earth as there is already a Sam Bell there alive and well. In truth, he would have been more himself on the moon believing a lie than he is on the cold reality of Earth.  These are fantastic performances by Sam Rockwell, and it got to the point where I was only thinking about how he was playing two characters when I was thinking about how I wasn’t thinking about it. There are other actors in the cast list, but they really don’t matter. This is essentially a Sam Rockwell solo piece, and it’s everything I could want from something like that.  They are smart about limiting the time Sam is actually on the surface of the moon but in a way that doesn’t feel like they are avoiding it. I love the design for the moon base and Gerty. They’re all very classic but in a way that doesn’t look cheap. The ping pong scene (which is what made me want to watch this) is very impressive and obviously included to help convince the audience that it is in fact two separate people and not one actor talking to himself.  This movie is successful with everything it sets out to do, and maybe the idea is not that crazy, but it really worked for me. It was a pretty easy watch, and I highly recommend it.