Moon

As soon as I read the description of this movie on IMDB, I was piqued. A movie about a crew member of mining on the Moon? My mind was racing along the lines of claustrophobia, mental breakdown, insanity and the like. As long as the movie didn’t include any goddamned aliens, it had potential to be classified “Awesome”. Surprisingly, it turned out to be quite different than either one of the scenarios.

One of the first things that struck me about the movie was the gritty realism of it all. Most movies based in space tend to have that over the top grandeur associate with them which works to some extent but we have rarely had a movie which portrays it for what it truly could look like in the future. When multinational corporations start exploiting the moon for minerals and going to the moon becomes a “Placement” issue more than anything. The movie moves at a brisk and comfortable pace. The correct amount, where if it goes a little too fast you’ll have to pause and think too much and if you slow it down it becomes boring and yet, at no point during the movie, do you want to stop it. (That came out wrong.) Anyway Kudos editors, well done. The concept of the movie is something that one cannot possibly guess. Hence, I won’t elaborate on it too much. All that you know is that our lead character has been heading mining operations on the moon for his contract of three years and it’s just about to finish. From then, the movie moves into some very weird and unexpected directions.

I will say this, for a person who’s been alone on a planet for three years with virtually no contact with the outside world and only a robot to keep him company, the lead actor appears sane than a person in his condition should be. I imagine the current users of orkut face a similar problem. My whole theory of mental breakdown fell flat there. Another plus point of the movie was its soundtrack. Created by Clint Mansell who brought us the famous “Requiem for a Dream” theme, the tunes are creepy, haunting and add to the overall lonely feel of the film.

The only gripes I had about the movie were that big and completely unexpected events which happen during the course of the film are underwhelmed. As in, if you were just told that you had been living a dream so far and are actually the king of neverland, your reaction would be little more than LOL, right? The actor here shows very little emotion when being told something extremely life-changing in this story. Like he’s being handed a million dollars and his face just says “Cool, thanks a lot.”

Final Verdict: The underwhelmed reactions and the lack of mental breakdown aside, the movie was next to flawless. An extremely engaging Science Fiction movie with an amazing background score and gritty realism in execution. Moon is a collector’s Item.

8.0/10