Directed by: Duncan Jones
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey
Rating: R

Sam Rockwell in Moon. (Courtesy photo)

There are many striking things about Moon, a compact sci-fi mind trip by first-time writer/director Duncan Jones. There’s the very real feel of inhabiting a run-down mining facility on the dark side of the moon. There’s watching Sam Rockwell acing not one, but two versions of the same character at the same time. However, in our current economic climate, perhaps most astonishing is that a movie like Moon—with a pre-shrunk audience and comparatively high indie budget—got made at all.

Moon is a very odd experience—not so much for the freaky plot twists as for how baldly derivative it is. It takes equal parts 2001, Silent Running, and Solaris, mixes in a dash of Outland, then adds a couple of really fun ideas of its own. But still, this is mostly an unacknowledged remake. Didn’t anybody tell Jones and his screenwriter Nathan Parker to inch a little further into their own territory? Nevertheless, Moon is compelling, thanks mostly to Rockwell and the controlled scope of its ideas.

Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the sole human at the Lunar Industries energy facility located on the dark side of the moon. Sam is a few weeks from the end of his three-year term, and it’s coming just in time. He’s getting snippy with his HAL-like computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Then the strange visions start. While out on the surface in his Rover-like transport vehicle, another strange vision causes Bell to crash. He wakes up in the infirmary under the care of GERTY. Then, against GERTY’s wishes, he journeys out again to the crash site and finds a living person inside the vehicle. This man also turns out to be Sam. The two are wary of each other at first, but soon make an uneasy alliance in trying to figure what is going on.

One challenge of real science fiction is to make sure your themes don’t drown your story. They don’t here, in part because they can’t quite achieve that brain-scrambling frequency. Jones also makes sure the profundity of Bell’s nightmare doesn’t suck away all the fun. But the balancing act, as impressive as it is from the first-time director, does exact a price. Moon simply isn’t an emotionally involving film. We’re left to marvel at Rockwell’s facility with playing off himself and the affecting art direction. Jones and Parker do deserve a big pat on the back for a third act that actually delivers on the movie’s premise. Endings are always a brute to pull off, and seldom more so than in science fiction. Congratulations to Jones for managing to match character with concept in the most conceptual of genres.

It would be fun to name the best actors who have never been nominated for an Academy Award. Sam Rockwell would certainly make my list. Few can cover Rockwell’s range from unbearably gentle (Safe Men, Made) to uncontainably psychotic (The Green Mile, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind). This could be the performance that takes him off the list. Rockwell has a great time with himself, but never gets cute. As much as you enjoy watching him interact with himself, you also think, yeah, that’s probably how someone would behave. Like Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers, Rockwell will have many viewers forgetting they’re watching the same actor.

The choice of Kevin Spacey as the voice of GERTY is perfect for a 2001 parody skit, but it is less effective. I liked his grasshopper villain in A Bug’s Life, for instance, and his work here is aided by the fact that GERTY’s only expressions come in the form of a smiley-face icon.

In classical music a composer could start with the work of an earlier master, then make his own variations. Why not take the same approach to film? In that sense, Moon isn’t an original film so much as a fantasia on the themes of 2001 and Solaris. It is a success. It is—if it doesn’t resonate the same way without those predecessors. Without them it probably doesn’t ever come to light.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard readers for many years.