::Moon (2009)::


Moon is a 2009 science fiction/psychological drama film about a solitary lunar employee who experiences a personal crisis as the end of his three-year stint nears. It is the feature debut of director Duncan Jones. Sam Rockwell stars as the employee and Kevin Spacey voices his robot companion. Moon premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was released in selected theatres in New York and Los Angeles on 12 June 2009. The release was expanded to additional theatres in the United States and Toronto on both 3 and 10 July and was released in the United Kingdom on 17 July.

This film was the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) winner of the 2009 award for the Best British Independent Film. Director Duncan Jones was also awarded the BIFA Douglas Hickox Award.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an employee contracted by the company Lunar Industries to extract helium-3 from lunar soil for much-needed clean energy back on Earth, leaving behind his wife Tess, who is (at the time of his leaving) heavily pregnant with their daughter, Eve. He is stationed for three years at the largely automated "Sarang" (sarang means love in Korean) lunar base with only a robotic assistant named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company; a chronic communications satellite failure limits him to only occasional recorded transmissions to and from Earth as fixing the link is currently not among the top priorities of Lunar Industries. Two weeks before completing his contract, he begins to hallucinate, briefly seeing a teenage girl on the station. During a routine rover excursion to retrieve ready canisters of helium-3 from a harvesting machine, he sees the same girl standing on the lunar surface. Distracted, he crashes the rover into the harvester, losing internal atmosphere and switching in a hurry to the suit life support.

Sam awakens in the infirmary and GERTY tells him that he is recovering from injuries sustained in an accident. Sam's suspicion is aroused when he eavesdrops on a live communication between GERTY and Lunar Industries executives, and learns that GERTY will not allow him outside the base. A message from Lunar Industries executives informs him that a rescue crew is on the way, to repair the damaged harvester. Sam sabotages a base gas pipe to convince GERTY to allow him outside to repair the fault. Once outside the base, Sam instead goes to investigate the damaged harvester, where he finds someone barely alive in the crashed rover: himself. He brings this Sam (the first Sam) back to the Sarang base.

The two Sams struggle to come to grips with the existence of each other, each believing the other to be a clone of himself, with the first Sam's physical and mental state beginning to rapidly deteriorate. The second Sam reflects himself at the beginning of his contract; sharp, headstrong and short-tempered. Unable to find answers in the base, as to the reasons for the inability to contact earth "live", they investigate the source of the base's communication problem by venturing outside the base's perimeter. There they find a series of antennas jamming direct live communication with Earth. The first Sam starts feeling pain and becoming ill, and returns to base where their suspicions of cloning are confirmed when, with the aid of GERTY, he discovers video logs of previous Sam Bell clones: working, becoming ill, getting into the "hibernation" pod to return home, and being incinerated. The three-year "contract" is actually the clone's life-span as GERTY insinuates.



Now with a better understanding of the nature of his existence, he explores the death chamber further, discovering a large room beneath it. The two Sams explore it together, finding an extensive cache of clones. The first Sam takes a rover out beyond the jammers, and establishes an up-link with the Bell residence using a portable video phone. While obscuring the camera, he speaks with Eve – now 15 years old – who was the girl he had seen previously in his hallucinations. He learns that Tess has died "some years ago", and that the original Sam Bell is alive on Earth.

With only a few hours before the "rescue" team arrives, the two Sams realise that if they are discovered together, they will both be killed. The second Sam makes a plan to launch the first Sam back to Earth in the helium delivery vessel, activating another clone to take the first Sam's place in the damaged rover. Prior to enacting their plan, the first Sam, realising that he is near death, insists that the second Sam escape whilst he returns to the rover to die. To cover up the second Sam's existence, GERTY permits Sam to wipe his memory and reboot him. After reprogramming one helium harvester to crash into the jammers, the second Sam launches his escape, which the first Sam sees in his final moments. With the jammer disabled, the base computer finally registers that a live up-link has been established. As the second Sam approaches Earth, voice-overs in different languages begin detailing the clone Sam Bell's evidence and Lunar Industries executives' arraignment on crimes against humanity.

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