Moon

In Kevin Spacey's GERTY, the lunar supercomputer with which Sam Rockwell, as Sam Bell, shares his desolate existence, I feared the inevitable shadow of HAL. To my delight, the film proved me stupid. In a landscape dominated by contrasts between natural and technological wastelands, how can the awful power of 2001 not cast its influence over the oppositions? Somehow, in Moon, it doesn't, and we owe Duncan Jones credit for breaking free from the most iconic commentary on the human calculus that art has ever known.

As Bell, and another Bell, and another, Rockwell commands our attention. Those who recall his truly disturbing performance as Charley Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James will notice a similar trajectory in Rockwell's Bell #1, the story's hero (?). The roles themselves, both in their diversity and in their range, as well as in their clarity, demand care and talent, which Rockwell effortlessly supplies. Although the movie gives us very little else on which to focus, forcing all our interest onto Bell, Rockwell never appears to labor under that weight. He wears his responsibility as the film's voice, soul, and conscience quite lightly, and we never strain to believe in him, his crises, or his hard recognitions.

In a way, though, Rockwell's performance is almost too good for the movie. Moon is well built, a sturdy, competent art object with credible writing, sublime visual effects, and intelligent appeal to quiet comedy in what is essentially a deranged moral and metaphysical miasma. But the story itself never quite rises to the level of its craft. Throughout the viewing I felt unhappily conscious of a rift between the film's formal excellence and its narrative mediocrity. In every aspect, in fact, apart from its idea, Moon shows exceptional skill and control. But as an idea, as a concept to be experienced and judged, the movie falters. Surrounded by such mastery--in the sound, the editing, the acting, writing, and directing--the worry that humankind may be the most unfeeling technology of all, well, looks a little well-worn. Unfortunately for the film's talent, the story would seem more memorable, if not more original, had its own technologies been less subtle and striking.

Perhaps owing to its very average idea, one that invites an equally average conclusion, Moon ends weakly--too weakly given Rockwell's strength and heart and the persuasive innocence of creatures curious for their own destruction. Among its scramblings in the final minutes to introduce closure, the movie seizes on a handful of platitudes--men can act nobly, even in death; the guilty may suffer punishment; perhaps we will save ourselves after all--and uses them as answers to rather terrible questions that better serve the film's aesthetic by going unresolved. Stuffed into the credits like a shameful secret, these easy assurances rob Moon of some of its courage, and they certainly mute the unease which the extraordinary writing, and acting, and directing had convinced us we must feel torturing our very bones. It felt, to me, like a sadly submissive gesture, and precisely at that moment when man, like Sisyphus, should clench his fist against the indifference that destroys him, marked, in his defiance, as a consciousness all the more tender and tremulous because it is absurd.

But, hey, half-WALL-E and half-The Shining with robots? Pretty fuckin' cool. B

Ass-Headed Bottom: I watched "Moon" rather as a pastiche of earlier smart-sci-fi, and I agree with you it fell apart toward the end there. I had been impressed, in fact, with the director's clever way around the "2001"-will-crush-my-space-movie-problem: namely, to admit that "Solaris," "WALL-E," and (if my hunch is right), even "The Forever War" (a marvelous sci-fi novel that got my heart beatin' and my pubescent blood salutin' back in the day) would all also crush his movie, and admixing them accordingly. Let the lion, tiger, and bear fight it out amongst themselves, the logic goes, and Dorothy will muddle through somehow.

But stray bits of nerd-code--like "Event Horizon" (which sucked, though it did give one nightmares) and "Armageddon" (a massive zit on the Criterion Collection's face)--dilute the pastiche. Certain scenes were lame without the interference of precursor movies--like the fight between Rockwells, which ends in the destruction of that farcically fragile matchstick-hamlet the older one was building. And even if it shows directorial balls to let the ghosts of "Solaris" into your own space-nightmare, I'm afraid uncanniness doesn't always translate well: that bimbo "wife" of his was just, well, blonde and breasted and otherwise a non-entity, which falls short of ghost and fantasy alike (contrast the kickass "Frankenstein" cameos in "Spirit of the Beehive").

And then, at the end, as Koko says, a muddled revenge plot, a heroism stuffed out of sight. Movie fell apart. A bold, clever, promising, quite beautiful clunker. Were that Asshead fellow still around, he'd give it a B-.

Ingrim Frazier