Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Uncategorized Moon hits your eye like old-school sci-fi
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 12:00 PM
If Star Wars never existed, science fiction films would look a lot more like Duncan Jones’ Moon.
In 1968, the genre took an evolutionary leap with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which married astonishing visual effects to provocative ideas about human nature and artificial intelligence. 2001 and subsequent films like Silent Running found inspiration in the decade’s radical politics and the triumphs of the space program. Celluloid sci-fi suggested that outer space could bring out both the best and worst in humanity, but then George Lucas’ retro space opera came along and all but consigned the genre to juvenile fantasies.
Director Duncan Jones presents Moon as a welcome throwback to 2001-era space stories and loads the film with Kubrick tributes. Lunar miner Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) jogs on a treadmill in one of his first scenes in a nod to Kubrick’s ill-fated astronauts. The pale, lonely rooms of Mining Base Sarang echo 2001’s sterile art direction. A computer and robotic-armed assistant named GERTY control most of Sarang’s functions. Kevin Spacey’s affectless delivery as the machine’s voice unquestionably pays homage to Douglas Rain’s work as the voice of HAL 9000. Moon’s tight, tense storytelling proves highly satisfying, even though it doesn’t attain 2001’s stratospheric heights.
Continue reading "Moon hits your eye like old-school sci-fi"
(Image courtesy Mark Tille/© Lunar Industries Ltd.)
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