Moon
Directed by Duncan Jones (2009)
I was lucky enough to not just see Moon in the lovely Screen on the Green cinema yesterday, but to also enjoy an Q&A session with director Duncan Jones, so where I can remember I’ll try and slip in a few interesting titbits.
The first thing to say, I suppose, is that Moon is a really wonderful film. Evoking the spirit of some of my favourite science fiction films from the seventies and eighties — from Solaris, to Silent Running, to Alien — and also reinvigorating techniques (including using physical models rather than CG effects) from the period: it felt both familiar and refreshing. There was a great story Jones told about the writers strike emptying the Shepperton Studios lot of big-budget hollywood movies (Angels and Demons and Robin Hood to name but two) leaving a surplus of amazing crew members that this low-budget British film could ‘borrow’ while the big-boys were out of town, including the guy who originally built the Nostromo.
It’s clearly been made with a great deal of love, and on a tiny budget (of around £2.5m). To put the budget in perspective, it’s a mere 10% of the budget of Danny Boyle’s so-called ‘low-budget’ sci-fi movie Sunshine. There’s a nod to this at one moment in the movie, when Sam Rockwell starts what can only be described as ‘crazy dancing’ to Katrina & The Waves’ Walking on Sunshine — very cheeky.
Like all low-budget movies, costs are kept down by keeping the cast down, with Sam Rockwell (and Sam Rockwell) being almost the only human(s)s on film for the duration (Kevin Spacey cameos as the voice of ‘Gerty’, the station’s benevolent computer). I can’t really remember Rockwell being in many films I enjoyed, though his recent turn in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was terrific, so I had absolutely no idea whether he’d be able to carry a film single-handedly. Needless to say, he does a terrific job. It’s a really commanding performance, segueing from placid and relaxed to confused, panicked, and terrified with consummate ease.
The impressively-modest Jones said yesterday that he’ll be forever in debt to Rockwell for ‘putting his career on the line’ with a first time director in a low budget sci-fi movie (when it’s put like that, it certainly sounds like a risky proposition), but Rockwell should also be grateful to Jones for giving him a platform to show what a terrific actor he clearly is.
It’s a real triumph of a movie, thoroughly enjoyable, and brilliantly put together to make a truly satisfying and interesting whole — it’s amazing to think it’s the director’s first shot at a feature length film. Go see it.
