'Moon' + Q&A, Screen on the Green 19.07.09

Now this is going to be tricky, because I want you to go and see this film, but I also don't want to tell you anything about it, because the less you know, the more you'll enjoy it.

The film in question is 'Moon'. I went spontaneously yesterday afternoon, because I was walking past the Screen on the Green and noticed that they were having a Q&A after the movie with the director, Duncan Jones, and there is very little I enjoy more than a Q&A with a director. But one of the things I enjoy at least as much as a Q&A with a director is a good sci fi movie, and I didn't have anything else planned for Sunday afternoon, so all in all this was a bit of a result.

Here is as much of the story as I am willing to tell you, and I would urge you not to find out more before you go. It is the future. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the end of his three year contract, working alone on a mining station on the dark side of the moon. All he's had for company over this time is a friendly robot (voiced by Kevin Spacey) and occasional video messages from his wife and daughter. He watches old sitcoms, he is whittling a model village as his hobby, he plays ping pong against the wall, and every so often he goes onto the surface to deal with breakdowns in the otherwise automated mining equipment. And he is fed up. You'd be fed up too if you'd been woken up every morning for three years by a musical alarm clock playing 'The One and Only' by Chesney Hawkes. He's only got two weeks left on base, and things have just started to get weird...

Anyway, it's a terrific, intelligent, scary, funny film, made on a shoestring budget (£2.5 million, which is nothing for a sci-fi movie), heavy on character and light on explosions. Much of the success of the film is down to Rockwell, who puts in a great performance as Sam Bell, and it was only after the film ended that I looked back and realised how good his performance had been. He makes it look easy and natural when it's anything but. Meanwhile, in part because the film is so low budget, the special effects are done the old-fashioned way, using models and camera trickery instead of CGI, and it's all the more atmospheric for it. A film like this stands or falls on its believability, and the simplicity and tangibility of the models and sets really helps with this. Equally, when the film takes on a more violent edge, the pain looks seriously painful. The film's physicality is so brutal that I kept flinching in my seat. But it's never over the top either, so you can't dismiss it. It has a fantastically understated aesthetic which packs a bigger punch than films with far more money to throw at spectacular effects - everything that needs to be real is so real that it's easy to buy the unreal elements. It's exactly the way sci fi should be.

Afterwards, Duncan Jones was brought on to answer questions. I was nervous. He's the son of one of the world's most famous stars (David Bowie*) and he's a film director: two very high risk indicators for being a self-obsessed arrogant cocktard. Or at the very least having terrible hair. But he's lovely, and his hair is completely normal. He answered all the questions with modesty and a fair amount of nervous laughter, and as it turned out it was one of the most interesting Q&As I've been to (and I have been to a lot), because when you're talking about the art of making films, little is more interesting than how to put together a convincing film, set in space, when all you've got to spend is the paperclip budget for the pre-production of Angels and Demons. Though again, I can't give any concrete examples as it would ruin the surprises in the film.

You could feel the audience warm to him very quickly, so much so that there was an audible rise in tension when a pedant in the audience got him into the following exchange:

Pedant: I think you'll find that there's no atmosphere on the moon, and so you wouldn't actually have been able to hear the trucks driving around.
[collective eye-rolling from audience]
Jones: Yes, I know. We tried it without sound and with no stars in the sky, but because it was so cheap it really did look like someone pulling a toy cart across a cardboard moon.
Pedant: Kubrick managed it in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
[Loud muttering throughout auditorium.]
Jones: I promise you, I tried it and it didn't work. But you can always watch it on DVD and turn the sound down.
[Applause]

So, fab film and charming director. I urge you to go and see Moon, and / or get the DVD (volume controls of your choice) as the commentary is bound to be fascinating. Also, it would be a personal favour to me, as Jones will use profits as funding for his next project, a Bladerunner homage based in Berlin, and that's a film I really want to see.

*UPDATE: Filled with terror that I have inadvertently slagged off David Bowie, my first ever crush. I would cheerfully eat my dinner off his feet. However, being a child of anyone famous can do odd things to a person, like growing a potato in a shoebox. Also, Bowie does sometimes have quite odd hair.