FILMS/
MOON
New Directors
England, 2008, 97 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sun, May 3 / 9:00 / Castro / MOON03C
CREDITS
- dir
-
Duncan Jones
- prod
-
Stuart Fenegan, Trudie Styler
- scr
-
Nathan Parker
- cam
-
Gary Shaw
- editor
-
Nicolas Gastor
- mus
-
Clint Mansell
- cast
-
Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Benedict Wong
- source
-
Sony Pictures Classics, 550 Madison, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022. EMAIL: info@spe.sony.com.
For three lonely years astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) has toiled on the moon, overseeing the Helium-3 mining operation that fills earth’s energy needs with only Gerty, his space station’s talkative computer, and delayed video transmissions from his wife and young daughter for company. Just weeks away from going home, he has an accident and regains consciousness to discover he is no longer alone. Plagued by hallucinations even before the mishap, can he trust that this surly stranger is even real? The encounter shakes Sam’s sense of self to the core, even as it calls into question the exact nature of his isolated mission. Director Duncan Jones shot his first feature on the same sound stage where Ridley Scott shot 1979’s Alien, and there are echoes of that sci-fi classic, as well as of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running. But the story Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker spin is unique, thrilling, paranoid, funny and ultimately poignant, as Sam comes to terms with his situation. Jones surrounds Sam with a visually stunning universe that captures the moon’s austere beauty against the vastness of space, in contrast to the intimacy of the space station—where Sam’s many plants and miniature village of carved wood establish a homey feeling that the stranger undermines. For all of its genre trappings, Moon is essentially a character drama limning the astronaut’s identity crisis. Rockwell, a 2007 SFIFF Midnight Award recipient, delivers a tour de force performance in a complex, challenging role.
—Pam Grady
West Coast Premiere.
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