for Best New British Feature Film sponsored by the UK Film Council.
The Michael Powell Award
Named in homage to one of Britain’s most original filmmakers and inaugurated in 1993, the Michael Powell Award has been supported by the UK Film Council since 2001. Rewarding imagination and creativity in British filmmaking, the award is judged by an international jury and carries a cash prize of £20,000.
MOON
Duncan Jones’ intriguing debut feature is a sort of rebel offspring of Red Dwarf (back when it was good) and Solaris (pick your favoured version). Warmly funny, but edged with existential melancholy and building paranoia, Moon tells the story of an engineer whose reality begins to unravel just as he’s reaching the end of a three-year solo mission in space. Sam (Sam Rockwell) is pretty chipper for a man who’s been away from home so long with only a slightly smarmy computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company.
He’s looking forward, for one thing, to seeing his beloved wife Eve (Kaya Scodelario) and their young daughter again. But then Sam makes some unexpected discoveries whilst out and about in his vast, barren workplace… Meanwhile, messages from his professional and personal contacts on Earth begin to seem ambiguous, and Sam comes to wonder whether GERTY is really as ceaselessly loyal as he’s programmed to be. The ensuing erosion of all Sam’s certainties is expertly handled, unpredictable and chilling.
The director must already know something about the nature of fame, since his parents are Angie and David Bowie; but here, he decisively claims some cult longevity for himself. Moon’s ambiguous plot twists are bound for deathless internet analysis and pub discussion, while the film’s blend of charm and sadness stirs real emotion. The technical delivery and detail, meanwhile, is faultless.
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The film’s atmosphere benefits from a brooding score by Darren Aronofsky’s regular collaborator Clint Mansell, and its visual effects increase gradually in their complexity and cleverness without lapsing into empty showiness. Like the greatest sci-fi classics, Moon doesn’t rely upon its fantastical elements for its impact; indeed, it can be read as an allegory for an entirely earthbound emotional collapse. Sam’s not battling aliens, after all, but issues that stem from much closer to home…
Finally, though, since there are hardly any other cast members and Rockwell is continually onscreen, Moon is bound to stand or fall by his performance. Not every actor could have pulled it off, but Rockwell is magnificent company, and once again proves himself to be one of current Hollywood’s most skilled, likeable and compelling performers.
