Here is a movie, quite unusual for science fiction, with
something rather deep to say about the human condition. That is what sets it
apart.
In the opening sequence of the film, we are watching a
commercial for a large corporation which runs lunar mining operations to
provide energy back on earth. The announcer puts emphasis on clean and
virtually limitless energy. The mining operation is where the story is set, and
this way of introducing it is brilliant. We’ve all seen such PR from
corporations. The tone is just right. Very convincing.
The story is about a man who works alone at the lunar mining
operation, a man approaching the end of his three-year contract, something to
which he very much looks forward. His only companionship on the moon is an odd
but very sophisticated robot and the occasional video of his family from back home
on earth. Live communication with earth is not permitted, supposedly for
unavoidable technical reasons.
He busies himself with a number of hobbies and pastimes, highly-focused
small-scale gardening and the construction of a beautiful and elaborate
table-top wooden village model, the demanding nature of the activities telling
us that this is a man of some intelligence and focus, and not just an
industrial worker.
His job is the regular collection of canisters filled with the
element helium-three, canisters filled by gigantic processing machines,
resembling in scale the kind of massive machines used in the Alberta tar sands.
They run continuously, striping the lunar surface and processing the material
to extract the helium.
Sam Bell, the character’s name, keeps track of the gigantic
machines back at the base/living quarters, heading out in full astronaut gear
and special vehicle to unload full canisters while the machine remains in
operation. He returns to the base and regularly shoots the canisters back to
earth.
That certainly sounds like a dull, uninteresting situation,
but the fact that that proves not to be the case is part of the film’s strength.
We have an outstanding performance by Sam Rockwell, the
performance of a lifetime one might think. We become interested in this man and
invested with what proves to be a far more complex and mysterious reality than
what we first see.
Rockwell, in the tradition of a lot of Hollywood “twins”
films of the 1940s, plays two characters. He does so convincingly. They really
are two characters, not just an actor changing his facial expressions.
We are taken for a bit of an emotional roller-coaster ride
with these two as they clash over personal differences and as we see assumptions
about the nature of their situation gradually stripped away.
This peeling away of layers of apparent reality during the
story is an effective way of holding our interest. We discover the full and
unpleasant truth right along with the characters. Corporate echoes about clean
energy come back to haunt.
The key to all good stories, whether in films or books, is
getting the reader or viewer involved in the character’s situation. Here is a
film that does that extremely well, and the more we learn, the more emotionally
involved we become.
Gerty, the robot in the story, is given a character quite different
than the menacing ones so often attributed to artificial intelligence in
science fiction movies, from Colossus in “The Forbin Project” to HAL in “2001.”
Gerty proves empathetic and helpful. Of course, it has been
programed to keep lonely workers company over three-year assignments, and that programming
in the end overrides restrictions from the mining company.
