It’s funny how so many movies are judged on their budget, which goes to prove that Hollywood is run by accountants and not filmmakers. The industry loves low budget films, when they are successful. Everyone talks about El Mariachi being shot for $7000 and what a big hit it was, i.e. how much money it made. Low budget means high profit, and yet most studios won’t put money into these projects, at least not until they are made and getting public interest. At the other extreme, Hollywood loves to talk about its excesses, the movies with budgets bigger than the GNP of third world countries. Movies that make a lot of money at the box office (another distorted figure), but rarely turn a profit, and certainly nowhere near the returns on a low budget flick. It seems that most of the mega-budget movies these days are comic book/sci-fi movies, but anyone who has been to SCI-FI-LONDON can tell you, the most intelligent sci-fi films are actually made on fairly miniscule budgets. PRIMER immediately springs to mind.
MOON, is a relatively low budget sci-fi film, written and directed by Duncan Jones. What one calls low budget is all relative, and if your relative happens to be one of the richest musicians in the world, then the perception of low budget can be a little distorted. Being an indie pic, MOON is definitely made for a hell of a lot less than TRANSFORMERS, and has a lot more intelligent ideas. MOON is the story of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an astronaut doing a three-year contract to maintain the moonbase and mining operations on the moon. As the end of his stint arrives he starts feeling unwell, and has an accident in his moon vehicle during a routine equipment check. He wakes up back in the moonbase with no recollection of how he got there. He begins to wonder if he is losing his mind when he has to face himself.
Rockwell is without doubt one of the finest character actors working in cinema today. He is so good that most people don’t even know who he is. When I AM LEGEND came out, everyone was raving about how Will Smith carried the first part of the movie on his own. Rockwell carries the whole of this movie on his own, with a truly nuanced performance. Apart from the HAL-like computer voiced by Kevin Spacey, and a few incidental characters whom appear of the video com, there is only Rockwell, and he manages to keep the film interesting throughout. It’s a fairly simple premise that is well-executed and brings up lots of interesting philosophical questions about our existence, which is what good science fiction should do, instead of bludgeoning us into stupidity with excessive violence and CGI, such as we have been subjected to of late. This film shows that Britain is still making some of the smartest sci-fi around, on sensible budgets. Forget about your overhyped Hollywood fare (and that includes a certain HP) and see this film.
MOON is in cinemas from July 17.