Moon

My handlers and minders don’t let me out much any more, due to ongoing litigations and my apparent inability to keep my pants on. As a result, I don’t get to the movies the way I did in my youth, and when I do manage a movie it’s usually a movie my wife, the sainted Duchess, wants to see. My wife is smart and pretty, but her taste in films is what scientists term atrocious. Don’t tell her I said that; I have enough bruises. For proof I offer up the simple fact that one of the last movies she made me see was Valentine’s Day. I rest my case.

Now and then, though, I am left on my own here at the Somers Bunker and allowed to rent movies on the magical televisual device in our living room. Whoever invented pay-per-view movies should be canonized immediately. Being able to press three buttons and watch a movie makes popping a DVD in seem like an immense chore. I mean, three buttons from across the room versus, what, 37 steps? No contest, mi amigos.

Anyway, while The Duchess was out of town this week I rented Moon, starring Sam Rockwell. I’d heard some vague things about it but didn’t know much more than the star and premise. I really enjoyed it, mainly because it was one of the rare pure science-fiction stories you see filmed these days. Most SFnal movies are genre-mixers, really – and nothing wrong with that, as my own books fall into that category. But now and then it’s nice to watch a movie that is just SF geekery, you know? And Moon falls into that category. There are no guns, no explosions, no fancy special effects, and 4.5 characters, total. The story is not exactly a puzzle; you should figure out what’s going on pretty quickly. But it takes the refreshing approach of taking its premise seriously, exploring that premise’s implications, and seeing where that takes you, story-wise. It works really well.

One reason it works really well is because it shows you a lot and tells you very, very little. This makes sense because the character is on a mining base on the moon by himself, with just a computer and some video messages from earth for company. He only knows what he knows, dig, and what he can piece together from observation and logic. No Basil Exposition[1] shows up to explain everything, and the script very smartly avoids any Moron Lines to stress things that are perfectly obvious. For example, at one point in the film a message arrives telling the main character that a rescue team has been dispatched to effect some repairs. The photos of the rescue team are all you need to see to know they are bad news. No one needs to make a speech about it, and the character doesn’t need to find damning evidence that throws us a plot “twist”. You observe the team, you put their arrival into context of what’s happened already, and you know they’re bad news. The real fun part is, the main character makes the same calculation, but internally. When he does voice his conclusions about the “rescue team” it feels perfectly natural, because we’ve all made the same mental journey.

It’s nice to see that in the age of crap like Transformers, which, frankly, gives SF a bad name, someone out there can still raise 5 million bucks, get actors like Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey to star, and put out a smart little movie like Moon. I hear the director plans to make 2 more films set in the same general universe, though not necessarily extending Moon‘s narrative beyond this movie. I’m glad to hear it.

[1] If nothing else, Mike Myers gave us one of the most inspired character names ever.