Moon: Movie Review
Benjamin Sussman
Issue date: 3/2/10 Section: Entertainment
In Moon, the film written and directed by Duncan Jones, we are confronted with several fundamental ethical issues. Sam Bell faces the alienation of being alone on a lunar station, completely isolated from earth by a faulty communications link. However, the reasons for this isolation are not as simple as being alone on the moon. It is also a story of betrayal, and of a corporate culture that has forsaken the sanctity and value of an individual human life.
Sam Bell is an employee contracted by Lunar Industries to extract helium-3 from lunar soil for clean fusion energy on Earth. He left behind his wife Tess, who is heavily pregnant with their daughter, Eve. He is stationed for three years at the largely automated Sarang lunar base with only a robotic assistant named GERTY 3000 for company. GERTY 3000 is the base's life support computer and robot whose role is that of keeping Sam safe. He is Sam's only humanoid contact on a daily basis until after his accident.
Indeed, Lunar Industries has perpetrated a convoluted lie about Sam Bell's contract. After a tragic accident, it is revealed that he has been cloned and is not coming home. The second Sam Bell, who is three years younger than the first, explains to the first Sam we met at the beginning of the movie the company's motive: "Look it's a company right, they have investors, shareholders, shit like that… What, what's cheaper, spending time and money training new personnel? Or you just have a couple of spares here to do the job. It's the far side of the moon! The cheap fucks haven't even fixed the communications satellite yet!" The corporation has placed their profits before all else, and the Sam Bell clones have been essentially relegated to drones, or cogs in the machine. They have been cut off from communicating with Earth in order to strip away their humanity. The messages they receive from Tess were actually prerecorded video messages meant to spur them to continue to work, hoping one day to make it home.
Sam Bell is an employee contracted by Lunar Industries to extract helium-3 from lunar soil for clean fusion energy on Earth. He left behind his wife Tess, who is heavily pregnant with their daughter, Eve. He is stationed for three years at the largely automated Sarang lunar base with only a robotic assistant named GERTY 3000 for company. GERTY 3000 is the base's life support computer and robot whose role is that of keeping Sam safe. He is Sam's only humanoid contact on a daily basis until after his accident.
Indeed, Lunar Industries has perpetrated a convoluted lie about Sam Bell's contract. After a tragic accident, it is revealed that he has been cloned and is not coming home. The second Sam Bell, who is three years younger than the first, explains to the first Sam we met at the beginning of the movie the company's motive: "Look it's a company right, they have investors, shareholders, shit like that… What, what's cheaper, spending time and money training new personnel? Or you just have a couple of spares here to do the job. It's the far side of the moon! The cheap fucks haven't even fixed the communications satellite yet!" The corporation has placed their profits before all else, and the Sam Bell clones have been essentially relegated to drones, or cogs in the machine. They have been cut off from communicating with Earth in order to strip away their humanity. The messages they receive from Tess were actually prerecorded video messages meant to spur them to continue to work, hoping one day to make it home.
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J R
posted 4/15/10 @ 4:34 PM EST
Excellent movie, and I really enjoyed this review.
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