Solid as a Rockwell
Sam Rockwell is an actor that clearly doesn’t get enough credit for his performances. From a nasty man, evil man in The Green Mile to a wacky, ship-stealing president in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Rockwell has range. Moon showed a new kind of range for the actor as he took on this sci-fi/drama head-on. He, and the robot Kevin Spacey (no, really…. he plays a robot), are the only two storytellers in this space oddity.
The story revolves around a man named Sam Bell (Rockwell). Bell is digging out material from the surface of the moon for a corporation. When he gets into a freak accident he wakes up back in the space station he started from, and things seem okay. When Sam, suspicious of something going on with his computer friend GERTY, leaves the complex and finds the scene of the accident he makes a haunting discovery; Sam is still in the broken moon rover. Confused, frightened and just beside himself, Sam retrieves the hurt body and brings him back to the space station. From that point on, Sam and his other self have two choices to believe:
1. Sam’s crazy and losing it right before he gets to go home to his wife/kid.
2. There’s something more terrifying than each Sam knows going on with GERTY and the station.
As I said in the beginning, I really loved the trailer for this film. It really captivated me and drew me in; so much so that I had to review the film when it arrived home. After watching the movie a couple of times I have come to realize that it has two clear directions to lead the audience. The first direction is that you can buy into what’s happening and figure out the ramifications of the actions from a particular entity. The second direction is that you can find deeper meaning in the film at hand. You can look at the two Sam’s as a psychological trip beyond trips. You can find meaning in the different personalities of one man.
For me, I thought it had a lot to do with corporations owning and manipulating us for their own needs. It spoke miles about how we can just live our lives through money, greed and ignore the fact that we’re being controlled. The movie reminds us of this lesson and even teaches us the pain of losing everything you hoped to achieve in a blink of an eye. It does that last part on many different levels.
My favorite part of the film has to be the beginning interactions between the two Sams. Though they are the same person, in a sense, they have two different types of personalities. This is a tough gig to pull off for Sam Rockwell. How could an actor take the same character and make them two different people, but still the same? Outside of the deeper meaning, I think that is what makes this movie really good; Sam Rockwell’s performance.
Is there any sort of downer for this film? I guess the pacing is a bit stretched. As an audience member you want the movie to get to the plot points as quickly as needed. This doesn’t mean it needs to be rushed, but the pacing needed to speed up to catch up with everyone’s anticipation. Moon, at times, seem lackadaisical and wanted to include more unnecessary, obvious details. My old playwright teacher use to say, “Keep the story confined and don’t over-explain to your audience; it will only insult their intelligence.” While I certainly don’t feel insulted, I do feel like the movie goes too far and doesn’t let the audience discover everything on their own.
Anyway, the movie is nothing short of brilliant and I can see why critics loved it. Sam Rockwell simply owned the screen and treated it right.
What’s even more impressive with this movie is that it’s on blu-ray. The special effects in HD are one thing, but the overblown whites/darks make the HD quality even better. Those two factors help to enhance the experience of blu-ray and when you have an entire screen full of it, that’s just easy to fall in love with. Sony treated the film to HD transfer right and made sure that you felt just as isolated and bland as Sam’s three-year stint on the moon. On top of this, there is a simply haunting, yet gorgeous, score by Clint Mansell that sounds wonderful in a DTS-HD remastering. This is by far the best way to view Moon.
As for the special features, here’s what you’re looking at:
– Commentary from writer/director Duncan Jones and Producer Stuart Fenegan
– Commentary from Jones and Director of Photography Gary Shaw, Concept Designer Gavin Rothery and Production Designer Tony Noble
– The Making of Moon
– Creating the Visual Effects – A Visual Effects Making of piece that includes: “CG Tour of the Moon Base,” “Cloning Sam” and “The Rovers”
– Science Center Q&A with Director Duncan Jones
– Filmmaker’s Q&A at the Sundance Film Festival
The commentaries and the ‘Making of’ featurette are really good, but the visual effects portion of the special features is nothing short of great. I could do without the last two features. It’s amazing what went into this limited release film, but it’s nice to see people enjoying and believing in their work.