Until 2009, Duncan Jones was a stranger to many and, for others, was simply the son of the unforgettable David Bowie, however, that year he presented himself to the world with an incredible film: Lunar.
Far from following in his father’s footsteps, Jones decided to pursue another artistic aspect: film. Graduated in Philosophy and with a doctorate in hand, he decided to complete his film training. In 2009 he premiered his first feature film.
- Many thought that by origin he would have many contacts and could afford to make a leap into the cinema in style.
- Although he could have adopted his father’s stage name and tried to get a lot of funding.
- He decided to be just Duncan.
- Jones and have a very limited budget.
Still, Lunar exceeded expectations and was an incredible success: it won the Sitges Film Festival and won several awards, including the best independent film of 2009.
It seems that only the great producers of Hollywood are capable of doing science fiction; that the only way to the genre are the spectacular special effects and the high budgets to which we have been accustomed to great productions.
Lunar departs from all this to present us with a work of intimate science fiction that reflects on the metaphysical and inherent questions of the human being. With a single actor and limited resources, we have a slow, simple and introspective film, but full of elegance and interesting approaches.
The premise is simple and not exaggerated: a future that may be closer than we think. On a planet where resources have run out, it is necessary to look for new sources that, in this case, will be on the Moon.
The natural satellite has been transformed into a mining operation and Lunar Industries Ltd. send one of his astronauts, Sam Bell, on a three-year mission.
Bell is responsible for controlling excavators that extract the materials needed to generate energy on Earth. In addition to its loneliness, there is an inability to contact its home planet in real time due to a failure in the communications satellite.
The company also has more important concerns than solving the communication problem. Bell can only contact his family through recorded messages. His only smart company is the GERTY robot, which inevitably resembles the 2001 HAL 9000: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrick’s film is very much present in Jones’ film; There are many allusions and even scenes based on the feature film that rediscovered science fiction. Kubrick’s film is not only present in Lunar: titles such as Alien (Scott, 1979) and Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972) have also made their mark.
The film also anticipates more recent titles, such as Interstellar (Nolan, 2014), Ad Astra-Towards the Stars (Gray, 2019) and even High Life (Denis, 2018). One way or another, all of this leads us to think about how science fiction has evolved over time and, more specifically, in relation to space.
From the dawn of humanity, human beings look astonishingly at the sky, observing stars and stars for different purposes. One of the great pioneers of the science fiction genre was the film Woman on the Moon (Fritz Lang, 1929).
The film is divided into two distinct parts: a first part that presents the idea of the journey to the Moon and the second part that corresponds to the journey itself. At that moment, man still dreamed of the stars, with the conquest of space; a scenario that was seen as a sign of progress, evolution and applause.
The years pass and we arrive in 1968, when filmmaker Stanley Kubrick changes, almost simultaneously with the history of humanity, the course of space science fiction. With 2001: A Space Odyssey, he perfected Lang’s now-simple models and used exceptional visual effects.
Kubrick seems to anticipate everything: he releases his film a year before landing on the Moon, in the midst of a space race; understands that machines may become a threat to man, but ends up giving way to hope, to evolution.
With The Woman in the Moon, we saw how our dreams came true; With Kubrick we saw what could happen with the space race that was taking place at that very moment.
One wonders: what’s going on now, will we continue to dream of the benefits of space now that the space race is over at all failure?
In this sense, Lunar shows us a much more bitter aspect, our world has been so massacred by man that, in the not too distant future, we will be forced to return to space, but this time in the hope of improving our life on Earth.
In the age of climate change, the world will become inhospit and space is the last resort. Likely, the idea of loneliness already sensed in his predecessors becomes more explicit here.
However, the object of study is nothing more than man, the man who is the victim of his time, of lies and of big business. Science fiction serves as an excuse to reflect on the present moment. There are no more dreamings, no more hopes or illusions. , only desolation.
In, science fiction is a context that arouses reflections on itself, introspective reflections, but also for the dehumanization of the world, led by large companies in which little or nothing matters to individual interests.
The aesthetic is absolutely taken care of, despite its small budget. Acting work is pushed to the limit by an exceptional Sam Rockwell, who has to deal with an older version of himself.
This is interesting because Jones puts before our eyes two men who claim to be the same person, but who find themselves at different times in their lives, so a conflict arises. Is the essence of the self immutable, imperturbable, or does it change over time and circumstance?
Lunar puts us in this situation: an old man? I am faced with a younger self with which he will have disputes on many issues and is that, surely, if one of us faces one of the past, we would face a complex scenario full of discussions.
Are they two different people?Here are some of the questions the viewer will ask.
Jones didn’t want to hide that, I, the dichotomy would appear in your film, however, it may be more interesting to watch the film in total ignorance.
Lunar is predictable from the first few minutes, but still never ceases to amaze, deceive and amuse. With a leisurely pace that contrasts with the great productions of contemporary science fiction, Lunar draws a scenario that is not strange, reminiscent of reality and is based on a claustrophobic and cautious environment.
Without much action, it raises momentous questions about human beings, demonstrating that science fiction still has that critical component that we both associate with dystopia. Unmasking abusive business practices challenges ideas such as freedom, dehumanization and progress.
Lunar is a film that drinks influences and shapes them in an elegant but personal way; it has its roots in the science fiction of the past to raise current issues.
Undoubtedly, a vision that departs from the positivism of decades before the space race, a more tragic vision in which space is only the last source of resources.