Spoiler Alert!!
The movie follows the story of an isolated engineer who works in the Helium mines on the far side of the moon. His work seems somewhat typical and our protagonist, Sam Bell, follows a very intense routine of taking a rover to mining vehicles and collecting the fruits of the operation's labor.
The film has a very unique set with tips of the hat to several other science fiction pieces.
There are also quite a few themes; most notable of them include isolation, artificial intelligence and the ethics of practicing human cloning.
Although one may immediately think back to Kubrick's masterpiece 2001 as to how isolation in space and AI work. This film was a delightfully creative change from what has become a staple for almost 40 years. The costarring Artificial Intelligence named Gerty (Voiced by Kevin Spacey) is as helpful as can be, and often repeats one of it's primary directives: "I'm only here to help you". The helpful AI is actually a pretty functional plot device and helps the story progress.
The reversal occurs when we finally learn that Sam (Sam Rockwell) is a clone and that he's is part of a process which is ongoing. With this knowledge he begins to question the surrounding and actually learns from Gerty that he is a clone. He is also given a life expectancy of three years after witnessing recordings from previous missions.
At first it feels like the film will be a schizophrenic thriller a la Fight Club propagated by the theme of isolation, but it evolved to challenge concepts involved with human cloning. Essentially, Lunar - the company running the joint - wants a cheap employment base. They're also the furthest mine located from human civilization. With this trump card they've essentially farmed a population of employees all sharing the same back story, the same interests, the same projects (Sam has a model he works on, which was started before he got there), and even the same family which is long dead.
The clones are suspended in this state of ignorance by a conspiracy that the communications satellite is down.
However, things change once there are two clones on the base simultaneously.
Their teamwork is unique also as neither of them have ever communicated with another human being, only Gerty. When the Lunar company relizes the older Sam has crashed a rover, Gerty wakes up a new clone and a team from Earth is sent to repair the damaged equipment.
The new Sam disobeys Gerty's insistence on not leaving the base and finds the wreck with the old Sam still alive. He brings him back.
As the old Sam gets older and older his health diminishes and the pair decide to leave him in the wreck for the rescue crew to find. At the same time the new Sam convinces Gerty to wake a new clone up.
The new Sam leaves the clone, and reboots Gerty erasing the memory banks and leaves for Earth after he reprograms a mobilized piece of mining equipment to collide with one of the communications jamming towers.
The story ends with everything on the Lunar base being as it was at the onset of the film and radio transmissions over the image of the shuttle carrying the new Sam returning to Earth.
This is an amazing movie which evokes several concepts of the perils of our times, the foremost being energy management on Earth and how far we will go to maintain it. It is also dark in illuminating how we collectively view human life and how a company - a company evidently managing all the planets energy - can so easily make this sacrifice.
The imagery of the dark side of the moon and a lunar base usually containing all but one astronaut is accompanied by a chilling score by Clint Mansell. A truly remarkable first film.
If you live in Toronto and want to view it on BD, good luck because it has literally sold out EVERYWHERE. This just shows you what a meager budget of $5 million can achieve.
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