Moon: Excellent Flick by Bowie's Son, Excellent Soundtrack
I caught a showing of Moon, the debut sci-fi movie by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones (also known as Zowie Bowie). The movie references classics like 2001 and Blade Runner, but it slowly twists into a chilling space odyssey that's slower than its inspirations, but leaves no less of an impact (Jones says he was also moved by Robert Zubrin's book Entering Space, about colonizing the solar system). The visually-rich, poetic tale is cautiously claustrophobic, the vastness of being alone among the stars creeping in on Sam Rockwell the longer he's left alone as a miner on the moon. It's hard to talk about the film too much without giving anything away, so I'll just say Bowie's obsession with lone astronauts has been passed on with great results to his son. I left the theater thinking about Moon for hours afterward.
Part of the film's impact came from composer Clint Mansell, who also did the music for the haunting heroin drama, Requiem for a Dream. In Moon, Mansell's minimal electronic soundtracks work like Jonny Greenwood's did in There Will Be Blood, pricking you with enough tension to foreshadow the darkness to come, without overwhelming the mood of what's on the screen. As with Moon's story itself, the soundtrack is cast with beauty and lonliness.
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