Moon

This summer has been riddled with dissapointments. Comedies without the necessary laughs (The Ugly Truth/Year One/The Proposal), Blockbusters that failed to fire on all cylinders (Transformers 2) and less than brilliant would-be-masterpieces (Public Enemies). So it’s not only refreshing, but faith restoring to see a movie that must be a next years Oscar Best Picture 10 lock in.

Moon is directed by Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie, who has now established himself as a hip young Hollywood director in his own right. The success of ‘Moon’ will undoubtedly see him helming bigger budget movies, although reigning in your excesses when 5 million turns into 50 million can be tricky, see the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ debacle.

But the film that he crafts does not rely on CGI and gadgetry. Indeed it’s not so much a sci-fi film as a psy-fi film, one that uses the context as a tool for spurring on the action rather than as the central plot device. Sam Rockwell plays the only man on the moon, working as a caretaker for a mining company. As his contract ends he begins to lose his mind, and too compoud this delusion he discovers that another version of himself has saved him from the wreckage of a crash.

Rockwell revels in a role that sees him both frustrated and delirious. The little neuroticisms that he indulges in as he goes about his life alone on the moon are both inspired and desperately lonely. He only has GERTY for company, with Kevin Spacey joining the ranks of actors to have voiced onboard computers, a role it seems he was born to play. But the film is all about the various forms of Rockwell that exist there, and it grows into a crescendo of fear and frustration, with his ultimate question being ‘Who am I?’

The ending is handled delicately. It doesn’t have a Shyamalan style twist, but it is cleverly constructed and fulfilling for the audience. The painful revelation echoes even in the vacuum of space, as Rockwell’s spaceman slowly comes to comprehend his life and with it comes the realisation that even if things are not what they seem, the only thing he wants is for them to be just that. It is poignant and disturbing, but at the same time electrifying.

Rockwell turns in a career best performance that leads the race for Best Actor. Whether the film can join him as a favourite for the gong remains to be seen, but there hasn’t been a better film in 2009 or a better sci-fi since Star Wars.