Moon riff
We watched Moon last night down here in the holiday shack, the surf a constant pounding white noise and the moths flying into the projector beam up onto the fibro wall. It was directed by Duncan Jones, famously the son of David Bowie & is his first feature. It is a weird collection of 70s sci-fi riffs joined together into what feels like an elegant though unadventurous cover version.
The look and feel is equal parts Silent Running, Dark Star, Solaris, 2001, Alien and the TV series Space 1999 and the later Star Trek series. It is also owes a lot to the stories of Phillip K Dick and Thomas Disch, even early Arthur C Clarke. It doesn’t do much with these ingredients except join them together and re-present them, though it does so with conviction and heart. One thing you can see them going for that doesn’t quite work is the tone of mystery and horror contained in some of these source films. Finding out what happens (which I won’t reveal in case you haven’t seen it) feels quite procedural, though gripping in a low key way.
Still, it is great to see someone trying to do something psychologically challenging with science fiction as it is rarely attempted in cinema post Star Wars with any of the depth you find in the written form. Clint Mansell did a fairly over the top score, heavy on complex synth textures which I enjoyed and was prominent in the mix filling lot of the space left by tracking shots across empty moonscapes.
