By Robert Scucci
| Published
Just last week, I stumbled upon 2018’s Mute, not realizing that it was a spiritual sequel to a far superior film, 2009’s Moon. I’ll be reviewing that one soon, but I found it underwhelming, and everything I’ve read about Moon suggested that it’s a perfect hard sci-fi thriller, on par with classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Though both movies technically occupy the same cinematic universe, they’re standalone stories, but I still wanted the context. Turns out, you don’t need to see Moon to enjoy, or not enjoy, Mute.
In my mind, though, Moon is a modern classic with clear themes and stakes, while Mute, despite not being a total waste of time, struggles to find its identity and comes off as disjointed.
If You Believed, They Put A Man On The Moon
When Moon introduces us to Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), we get a full crash course in the nature of his work. He’s a lone employee working for Lunar Industries on the Sarang Station, located on the dark side of the moon, and he’s about to complete his three-year contract. He works as an operations technician specializing in mining an alternative fuel known as helium-3. On Earth, an oil crisis made mining for resources on the moon inevitable, but with the foundation already in place, it’s a pretty turnkey operation.
With constant reminders that external communications are down, Sam can only communicate with Earth through occasional video exchanges, but there is no live feed. He gets updates from his wife, Tess (Dominique McElligott), and his young daughter Eve (Rosie Shaw), but it’s not enough to fight off the intense loneliness he feels every single day. He finds companionship in a mobile AI named GERTY (Kevin Spacey), but the fact that his only tangible relationship is with a computer program doesn’t do his mental state any favors.
Sam begins to hallucinate, which eventually leads him to a crashed rover where he finds another unconscious astronaut. Here’s the kicker: the unconscious man appears to be Sam’s identical twin, and GERTY isn’t telling the full truth. Both Sams come to blows, accusing each other of being clones before it dawns on them that they’re both clones of the original Sam. Neither man knows how long they’ve been living like this, or how many other clones there are, either in hiding or actively working in secret on the space station.
As the Sams work together, alongside GERTY, to uncover the true nature of their work and identities, they experience ego death, crash out, and regroup on multiple occasions, wondering how much of their lives are actually real, and how much of it is a lie made possible through false memory implants created by Lunar Industries.
Ego Death … IN SPACEEE!!!
While it goes without saying that Sam Rockwell does a stellar job playing off himself in Moon, I feel like that’s the obvious thing to talk about, so I’m not really going to get into it here. What I found most fascinating about Moon is the very system in which the Sams operate. They make this startling discovery, go through their respective grieving processes, and then come up with an escape plan.
They search the entire space station looking for clues about additional clones, and they venture out on unsanctioned discovery missions in search of what they suspect is a signal jammer. GERTY is designed to be helpful to the Sams, but his primary objective is ultimately to keep the helium-3 train moving at full capacity so everybody on Earth can enjoy the fruits of their labor. What really stuck with me is how easily the Sams are able to learn the true nature of their situation. It gets to the point where they straight up ask GERTY why they’re able to roam around without consequence.
To me, that’s where the true terror lies in Moon. It’s a subtle idea that gets casually brought up throughout the film, but it hints at a much larger systemic issue taking place. Both men, who are clones of the same astronaut and have no clue how long they’ve been living as clones, or how many clones came before them, are able to crack the conspiracy with little to no resistance. This tells me that Lunar Industries has been playing this game long enough that it no longer cares what each individual Sam does because it doesn’t matter. GERTY is tasked with keeping them in check, sure, but it’s such an isolated mission in such a remote place that even if they escape successfully, then what?
The fact that these men are fighting for their lives, and it’s completely hopeless because the system in place that made this all possible in the first place is so much larger than them that their lives don’t even matter one bit, is probably the most subtly terrifying thing about this film. This is just a line in the books. Their lives are literally a writeoff.
The entire system in which Moon operates is an unthinkably oppressive one. The machine will keep running, and the resources will keep getting mined. It doesn’t matter if one clone crosses paths with another clone and devises a plan to escape back to Earth to be with his family. The system is designed so nobody makes it far enough to expose what’s actually happening on the dark side of the moon.
Time will continue to march forward, and there will be more Sams showing up to work and wondering why it’s getting harder and harder to communicate with their families back on Earth. It’s a truly horrifying look at just how much individuality we stand to lose when the powers that be decide that resources are more important than the humanity they’re supposedly trying to save.
As of this writing, Moon is streaming for free on Tubi.
