Moon (2009)

Moon (2009) contains little of what we expect from the typical Hollywood sci-fi movie. Moon prides itself on leaving out end-of-the-world scenarios and excessive technical mumbo-jumbo. That's certainly a good thing. This is far from a flawless movie, but a nicely executed idea nonetheless. What speaks for it is the focus on psychological tension and the dazzling absence of characters (strictly speaking, there's only one character in the movie but everything hinges on how you define "character") and action. It's a quiet little film that contains one reference to 2001: a space odyssey after another. Hell, Moon has a HAL of its own (with Kevin Spacey's voice). It's hard to say anything about the themes of the film without spoiling the twists of the story. Let's say it revolves around the inner struggles of Sam Bell, operator of a space station on the moon. He's an astronaut on a 3-year shift. The purpose of the base is to mine rocks for energy which is sent to earth. It's a lonely existence that is only aggravated throughout the film...
What bugged me at times about Moon is its slightly conventional aesthetics. It doesn't feel like a very original film. We've seen the same thing in the first part of Sunshine and in other contemporary sci-fi movies too. Don't get me wrong, visually, it's a truly a good-looking film (the details of the base etc.) and some images have a mind-chilling quality. The problem is perhaps that the pictures are a bit shallow - there's nothing really surprising about them. There's the obligatory 5-10 second cuts and the obligatory "eerie stillness" that we've learned to expect from this type of movie. All in all - the film is perhaps too pretty for its own best. That problem is only deepened by the use of sentimental, tv-drama piano music.
On the level of character excavation, the film is a positive experience in that it dodges the worst clichés. That said, I was still a bit disappointed. What I presume to have been an interesting script with some interesting ideas has not really transformed into a movie that digs deep enough, or let's say it isn't very clear into what depths it sets out to dig.
It's a good film, but not a great one.