In “Moon,” the titular, silvery orb is a lonesome place. Helium 3 miner Sam Bell is ready to say so long to Sarang, the lunar base where he has been stationed solo for three years.
Just as he’s about to head to Earth and hearth, to his wife and their 3-year-old daughter, things get strange.
Played with beautiful intensity by Sam Rockwell, the engineer’s temper grows short. He gets testy with Gerty, the unnervingly even-keeled robot voiced by Kevin Spacey.
And then, by accident, Sam meets his replacement, who appears to be a haler, heartier and, yes, cockier version of himself.
Duncan Jones did not go the easy route for his directorial debut with “Moon.” After all, independent cinema with its tight budgets doesn’t often attempt the genre that’s become synonymous with astronomical figures and stellar F/X.
“People keep asking me why I love science fiction,” the 37-year-old Brit says over a breakfast of steel-cut oats at a Denver hotel.
“The reason is that you can tell stories that are personal or about human facets that were you to put them in a contemporary setting, people might feel attacked. Or they may just become bored with it because it’s so mundane.”
Sam is, after all, a working stiff, employed by a bottom-line minded “green” company, who aches to punch the clock and get home.
“When you put humans in an alien environment, these stories have a lot more contrast,” Jones says. “You can really pick up nuances of what makes a human being. That’s what I like about science fiction.”
Jones has liked the genre for a very long time. He was an avid watcher of classic sci-fi films and later, a reader of genre stalwarts J.G. Ballard and William Gibson.
In the jarring meeting of Sam and Sam, Jones conceived a story that has the gravitational pull of the personal. (Nathan Parker penned the screenplay.)
“When I was growing up, I was a very angry young teenager,” he says. “I didn’t know my place in the world. I didn’t know what I was trying to do in my life. I didn’t know where I fit in. It took a really long time, a really long time, to work that out.”
Given Jones’ lovely manners and easy, indulgent laugh, that seems like it must have been in a galaxy far, far away.
Jones was born in Bromley, South London. His parents divorced when he was quite young. “Unusually, my father was given custody,” he says.
“When I was growing up, we traveled all over the world. When he was touring, a lot of the time I was with him.”
These revelations lead to an embarrassing moment for the interviewer but a satisfying one for a guy who has worked hard to become his own man.
“Who is your father?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, my father is David Bowie.” He then adds graciously, “I’m really glad you wanted to talk about the film.”
He truly discovered filmmaking, he says, when he accompanied his father on the set of Tony Scott’s television adaptation of the 1983 vampire flick “The Hunger.”
“Even though I was feeling sorry for myself, Tony was so lovely and generous with his time, he convinced me that’s what I should do be doing,” Jones said.
Scott encouraged him to do commercial work as a way of honing skills. Jones won numerous awards for his advertising work before shooting his first feature.
“Moon’s” air-locked quality will be familiar to anyone who came to sci-fi via moody classics like “2001: A Space Odyssey” or “Silent Running.”
But beyond the director’s jones for golden-era sci-fi was his interest in Rockwell.
“I’d met with Sam about another project because I wanted him to be in my first film,” he said. “I wanted him to play the villain. . . . he felt he’s played enough villains. But we got on really well. And I said I’d write something for him.”
Arguably the most soul-rattling moment in “Moon” comes as Sam weakens and his surer self rises to the occasion.
Besides being technically difficult to pull off, these physical interactions between a healthy self and an ailing self, a younger self and a rapidly faltering self are sorrowful and touching stuff.
They are the outgrowth of Jones’ years of struggle and brooding.
“That was part of what I wanted to get at,” he says. “The whole idea of when you meet yourself, when you come face to face with yourself are you going to see more than the faults? Are you going to see something good in yourself?”
