Moon

"Hello, I Must Be Going"

Charlie Duke lived for a couple of days on the Moon. In two documentaries,* he's repeated the story of the vivid dream that he had while feverish during a training exercise.

He and his Captain, John Young, were driving in their Boeing-built moon-buggy to an area that did not seem familiar, at least it didn't look like the geography of the place they'd been prepared for. They kept driving, and came across tracks. Tire tracks that stood out on the virgin lunar soil like they had fluoresecent yellow stripes painted down them. Somebody had been here before.

And so we got excited, told Houston, and they said 'Well, follow the tracks.' You could tell by the tread marks that the vehicle was going to the east. So we turned right, to the east. And towards the eastern end of the valley we come upon this car, as we come over the ridge and there's this car which looked very similar to the Lunar Rover and there was two figures in it. So we radioed that we'd found this car, and we start to describe it, and they start to get excited, we're excited. So we turned the car, pointed and turned the TV on, and I ran over to the passenger side and I pulled up the visor and I was looking at myself. But it wasn't like a nightmare - it wasn't like you were dead - whoever it was looked like me but it wasn't me, I'm in this dream and I'm ok, and it wasn't like a premonition. I didn't wake up, it's just me.

He told no one about that dream until after he came back from the Moon.

There's a similar thing going on in the new Duncan Jones sci-fi movie "Moon" (it seems like we've been inundated with sci-fi films the last few years, but we really haven't—they've been dumbed down fantasies and super-hero flicks). Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an employee for Lunar Industries, finishing up a lonely three-year stint on the far side of the Moon, supervising and fixing up the robotic rock harvesters providing the Earth with "safe, clean" Helium 3 for energy—by this time (never specified) 70% of the USA's energy comes from Helium 3.

He gets taped messages from Earth from his wife and 3 year old child. He gets occasional updates from Headquarters, he works on his whittled miniature village, gets on the treadmill, and watches old episodes of "Bewitched."** And there's a helpful robot named "Gerty" (voice by Kevin Spacey, channelling Douglas "Hal" Rain), that can see to his medical needs, give him updates and generally "make sure" he's safe. He also has a handy cup-holder, and a little emoticon-generater to show Sam his "mood."

Something goes wrong (something always has to go worng!) with one of the harvesters, and Sam goes out to investigate. Lately, he's been hallucinating, seeing people at the Sarang Moon Base and he's supposedly the only bi-ped on the planetoid. One of those hallucinations distracts him and he ends up smashing his vehicle into the side of the harvester, injuring himself in the process.

He wakes up in the infirmary—Gerty solicitously telling him that he needs to take it easy and that he's in no condition to resume his duties, and indeed, he's having trouble walking and remembering what happened to get him there, and he's surprisingly short-tempered. Not only that, Gerty's telling him he can't go outside...at all...he's in no shape to do anything right now, and Earth is sending out repair crews to fix the harvester. But that's not good enough for Sam, so he devises a leak to some system or other, so he HAS to go outside to check the source.

Once he gets out there...well, that would be telling.

Jones sets up a nifty little mystery that could have twenty different sci-fi solutions to it (they've all been dramatized at one time or another on "The Twilight Zone"), and keeps you guessing until all becomes clear. But as with any good science fiction story, it's the implications that are most interesting, and they're delved into, and expanded in a brief audio coda at the film's end. Jones also finds a neat way to set the stage beyond the dull "It was a Dark and Stormy Future" graphics scrawl to explain how "things are different." And he has an able ally in Sam Rockwell, who is becoming one of our most gifted film actors. Here he has to do double duty as actor and re-actor (Spacey was recorded at another time, so Rockwell had to react to, basically, nothing) and he manages to do it—as he always does—in the most low-keyed, least grand-standing way possible. His own performance manages to stave off early speculation of "wot's hoppenin'" and with the sophistication of film-goers to the tricks of film-makers, that's a rare commodity. Almost as rare as moon-rocks.

Those who come to these for special effects jollies will see a return to old-school model effects (good ones!) and the very little amount of CGI (mostly in the realm of photo-manipulation). The sets are industrial-functional with a bit of future-pre-fab thrown in.

It's a good film, B-level science fiction, nicely thought out and carried out with sophistication, but nothing to radio Mission Control about.

"Moon" is a Rental.

* "For All Mankind" and "In The Shadow of the Moon" (in the out-takes)—each has a different perspective, and are both highly reccommended. It's hard to believe, but in a week from yesterday, will be the 40th Anniversary of the first lunar landing.

** My wife's favorite. Actually, it's an interesting choice for reasons I won't get into.