What’s even lonelier than being stranded on a desert island? Being alone in space, maybe. Sam (Sam Rockwell) is coming to the end of a three-year contract in which he is the sole human element in a mining operation that supplies most of the energy used on earth. (It’s a sci-fi plot that actually emphasizes the science as much as the fiction; the helium isotope he mines actually exists on the moon and may someday be used for energy.) Unlike Tom Hanks in Cast Away, though, Sam doesn’t need to rely on a volleyball for conversation; he has a computer assistant called Gerty, who is voiced by Kevin Spacey doing his best imitation of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And he has TV and radio. (But would he really be listening to music and watching programs that even now are decades old?)
I don’t want to give away the plot, because it’s quite clever, but let it suffice to say that the movie doesn’t dwell upon how Sam whiles away his free time, but on how he has changed in his time away, on the nature of the company and the computer that manage his communications to Earth, and on the unexpected discovery he makes about himself and his mission. In other words on both the literal and figurative dark side of the moon. Unlike the vast majority of science fiction on film, this isn’t an action movie set in space, a special-effects movie, or a movie about aliens. There are barely any humans in the movie except for Rockwell, who has quite a showcase, since he’s in every scene. This is a very smart, small film that I wouldn’t have minded going on longer.
IMDB link
viewed and reviewed 8/6/09
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