“…What would it be like to meet… yourself?”

In a not-too-distant future, we meet lonely moon miner Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell).  Sam is nearing the end of his three-year mission on the moon mining valuable Helium 3 that provides most of the earth’s power.  And he is going a little nuts all by himself on this space station biding his time by fixing broken down machinery, talking to his plants and building a replica model of his hometown.

Okay, he’s not all alone, his automated robot friend, sort of like HAL from 2001 named GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey, provides some relief from the boredom.  But the occasional message from his wife and child back on earth only remind Sam just how lonely his world has become.  With just a few weeks left until he departs home to earth, a wrench is thrown into the plans when Sam awakens from an accident.  When he investigates to see what happened, he discovers another astronaut who turns out to be… him.  To describe anything further would be spoiler territory, so let’s just leave it at that.

Director Duncan Jones provides a smart sci-fi thriller in the vein of Silent Running and Outland, two great classics of the genre.  This is the kind of real science fiction that is rare today in the age of overblown mega-special effects spectacle where people themselves are merely backdrops.  Great sci-fi asks questions that relate to how humans react when confronted with the unknown… normally provided by an advance or accident involving science. The first question that Moon asks is what would it be like to meet… yourself?  From this very first question, the issues of life and death are explored in somber and sometimes humorous ways. Sam Rockwell is amazing acting in scenes especially when you consider he is basically alone, interacting with either GERTY the robot or with… himself. Director Jones studied movies such as David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers to provide the realism for complex scenes in which Sam and other Sam interact.  This clearly provided the guidance to make a simple game of ping pong with Sam and Sam look absolutely seemless.

I hope that the success of Moon will inspire a return to the type of intelligent sci-fi that is sadly lacking at the movies currently.  So make it your mission to seek this

Words by Chris Gore, red carpet photos by Dustin Downing