I finally saw Duncan Jones’s science-fiction character-piece-cum-thriller Moon, and was glad I braved the sweat-soaked journey down to the Landmark Sunshine to do so. Moon is very, very much a creature of its own influences, and owns up to this repeatedly–and wisely, I think. If you’re going to do a suspense story about a man stranded in a cabin-fever outer-space environment with a soft-spoken computer for company, what’s the sense of playing cat and mouse with Kubrick? Better to run at 2001 head on and smack people in the face with it so we can put it behind us. I think you also see elements of Battlestar Galactica‘s lived-in, clunky equipment, Alien‘s sinister Company, the instantly dated futurism of Epcot center (those fonts!), AI‘s pathos-inducing automatons (there’s a bit here that hit me as hard as any robot-driven emotional high point since the teddy bear handing the kid the lock of hair), and some fairly direct links with the first great science-fiction work of director Jones’s dad David Bowie, “Space Oddity.” (Which in turn was a fairly direct riff off of 2001—A Space Odyssey, duh–which will bring us back to Do.) By using all of this as visual shorthand (though to be fair it adds flourishes of his own, including all those gorgeous lunar landscapes and one really breathtaking shot of the Earth), Moon has the freedom to focus on Sam Rockwell’s compelling, bifurcated performance. I’d really rather not come right out and spoil the central conceit of the film, but it requires Rockwell to take his character, Sam Bell, in a couple of very different directions, both of which must remain true to what has gone before. He pulls it off, and when it dawns on you that it’s happening, it’s pretty magnificent.

At times, the movie was difficult for me to watch. It deals with death very directly, and not in a “BANG YOU’RE DEAD” way. The body breaks down as the mind’s comprehension of what is about to befall it grows, while others are helpless to do anything about it. I’ve gotten to know this feeling pretty well lately, and having the film hold up a mirror to me in that regard was…bracing, I guess is the word. Bracing and moving and good.

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