{"id":3619,"date":"2009-07-07T22:47:02","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T03:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=3619"},"modified":"2011-11-09T20:35:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T00:35:00","slug":"moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=3619","title":{"rendered":"Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"moon_jpg_595x1000_q85\"A sterile home is just plain creepy. It suggests something unlived in, frozen in time, free from human connection. David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers<\/em>, The Fly, Scanners<\/em>) knows this, which is why he\u2019s always setting sections of his movies in hospitals, the most antiseptic place possible.<\/p>\n

The body that had previously inhabited the room is gone. The room is waiting for the next victim, like a bed and breakfast of death.<\/p>\n

Directors who make science fiction films understand this concept as well; hence the clean, blank, whiteness of everything from spacesuits to spaceships to walls to kitchens. Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em> plays like a paean to how unsettling sterility can be, from Hal\u2019s perfect and boring cadence to the way the astronauts do exercise without causing a smudge or footprint.<\/p>\n

In Duncan Jones\u2019 Moon<\/em>, Sam Rockwell\u2019s character, Sam Bell, seems aware of this cleanliness concept as he angrily exclaims about his complete knowledge of his ship and how he \u201cknows every speck of dirt between those cushions.\u201d Its Sam\u2019s way of reassuring himself that he is a human being who can make a mess and not clean it up, and that he\u2019s completely aware of his surroundings. Of course, the fact that he\u2019s saying it to his clone undermines his point a little bit.<\/p>\n

\"moon2\"Sam\u2019s been on the moon harvesting an energy source that’s being redirected toward Earth for almost three years now and, in a way, he relishes the boredom, the repetition and the rote conversations he has with the ship\u2019s computer, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey in a wonderfully flat way that is either menacing or reassuring, depending on how you read the lack of inflection). Sam\u2019s nearing the end of his contract with an enormous corporation, which is a bad sign in a sci-fi film, as evidenced by the employees of the Nostromo in Alien<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Moon<\/em> is close to Solaris <\/em>in concept, but Alien <\/em>in style — especially the slow, menacing build-up (and terrific practical effects and miniature work, though sometimes the space rovers do look a little too much like Tonka Trucks). The slow build leads to plot turns that may not be revolutionary, but are unnerving, especially<\/em> if you sense them coming. Like Alien<\/em>, Moon <\/em>is anxious, using its thumping score (by Clint Mansell, whose music was similarly effective in Requiem For a Dream<\/em>) to tap at your nerves. But it taps bit by bit, instead of using the noisier approach of the ineffective and shallow Event Horizon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"moon01\"And unlike Event Horizon<\/em>, Rockwell is alone on the ship (and planet). So the only death he can worry about is his own. This means that Rockwell doesn\u2019t get a break and is on-screen in every scene, often having to interact with himself. Jeremy Irons, who, in Dead Ringers, <\/em>created the most convincing divide between the twin characters he plays, two completely different personalities, had scenes with Genvieve Bujold to fall back on. But Rockwell is on his own. He gives the audience the same man at different stages in his life with different realizations of the amount of betrayal he may be the victim of, and it is totally convincing.<\/p>\n

\"rockwell-moon-1\"What\u2019s so refreshing about Moon<\/em> is the amount of information that Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker assume we can pick up without them pointing it out or overexplaining (they must have learned from David Mamet\u2019s Spartan<\/em>). This\u00a0 suggests that they believe we are smart; not just waiting to be led from one plot point to another. Rockwell has the perfect face for what happens to him, he doesn\u2019t have lot of mobility or slack in his skin, and so he provides us with Cro-Magnon man expressions as he tries to comprehend his situation. This is perfectly countered with Gerty\u2019s face, which is a simple \u201chave a nice day\u201d smiley face, changing to a frown or tears when Gerty thinks that\u2019s what Sam would expect as a human reaction.<\/p>\n

Gerty\u2019s avoidance of Sam\u2019s questions about what\u2019s really going on sets up terrific scenes where Sam Bell reminisces about his life on Earth — with his own clone. Sam\u2019s attempt to reconcile and accept his situation is both inspiring and foolish; it\u2019s no wonder the stress builds up so much. As he says early on, with obvious foreshadowing, \u201cmy tummy\u2019s a little tender.\u201d<\/p>\n

I may not be a clone. But watching Moon<\/em>, I\u2019d have to agree. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sterile home is just plain creepy. It suggests something unlived in, frozen in time, free from human connection. David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers, The Fly, Scanners) knows this, which is why he\u2019s always setting sections of his movies in hospitals, the most antiseptic place possible. The body that had previously inhabited the room is gone. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[4058,5188,644,4736,1450,291,4771,600,4774,4776,4768,4772,1048,4782,4293,2961,903,4766,32,3356,35,144,2340,3256,4777,4764,4784,439,2533,4780,210,4783,4767,4781,1640,4775,4600,4765,4773,1873,440,4778,310,723,5189,3404,686,268,49,2536,4762,2145,411,4770,4763,145,3103,822,2539,586,2534,2535,4779,1749,4769],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}