Parnassus and Moon
by phill
Movies are not
usually my preferred form of going out. It’s not that I don’t like movies, I just have pretty specific tastes and a lot of movies don’t really appeal to them (same deal with tee-vee). However, my friend Zak has recently converted our entire group into Luna*-loving cinema-goers, so I’ve been hitting the silver screen a little more frequently than usual.
Last week we went and saw Moon, a relatively hard sci-fi directed by Douglas Jones (of ex-Zowie Bowie fame). It stars Same Rockwell whom I’ve loved ever since I saw him in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I fucking loved this movie. They give you the background in a neat parcel in the credits, explaining that the ultra-rare Helium-3 is stored in the rocks of the Moon and the harvesting of these rocks provides Earth with unlimited energy. It’s simple, it’s effective and we have the context for the human drama that unfolds as a result. This is exactly how sci-fi should be. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Wells, who is approaching his third and final year working as contracted manual labour on the Moon harvesting the Helium-3 that Earth so desperately needs. After an accident caused by visions of a young girl, Sam wakes up in the medical area of his base. And it’s from here on in that things start to get interesting. The twists are revealed more as curves, guiding us through the plot points as gently as Kevin Spacey’s voiced robot ally. As Zak pointed out after the film ended, Spacey did an excellent job of voicing the robot, providing just enough variation to have us wonder about its motivations. Unfortunately I can’t say much more without giving away spoilers, so let me urge everyone to go see this so I can rave about how great everything is without feeling bad.
This past weekend we went to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. I might as well admit that the only reason I wanted to see this was, yes, because it was Heath’s last film appearance. The film itself was, well, a bit confused. This isn’t exactly surprising given that it’s Terry Gilliam and it’s my opinion that Terry Gilliam has a tendency to want to do everything at once. It was a story of revenge, it was a story of a friendship between old enemies, it was a story of redemption and evil, it was a story of the moral choices that we make, it was a story of unrequited love, it was a story of belief and the temptation of losing wonder in the face of the modern world. Unfortunately it was none of these things particularly strongly, and so I was left feeling a bit disappointed with the overall confused effect of all these different angles. Don’t get me wrong, it was a laugh; the cast did very well, the costumes and set were amazing and Heath’s performance was great. Nevertheless I felt like Gilliam could have used a more ruthless editing process to refine some of the lesser expressed concepts. I also, and I don’t know if this was just me or the audio in the cinema or what, but I found that a lot of the time I couldn’t understand a damn word that the actors were saying. Doctor Parnassus mumbled a heck of a lot; okay he’s drunk most of the time but we still need to know what he’s going on about. Heath similarly has a very broad accent and talks very quickly, leading to some of his lines somehow being lost in translation between English and English. It seemed that everyone’s lines were trying to be just that little too clever. Anyway, like I said it is still an enjoyable film, but I just feel with a bit of refinement it could have been a great film and more of a testament to Heath’s final act.
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*For those not in Perth, Luna is a small cinema in Leederville that shows limited release films and foreign language festivals most of the time. You know the place, there’s something like it in every city in the world.
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Comments
I liked Moon, but I think the storyline became obvious after the accident. Did you notice the sticky note on the robot before he took it off? I like details like that. Sam does rock well (sorry, I had to).
Dr Parnassus was very pretty and had an interesting plot, but the execution of it all was average. I think Heath’s Joker was fucking amazing, but this role wasn’t his best.
Have you seen District 9? I rate that muchly.
The storyline did become relatively obvious, yes, but despite that it was still an enjoyable journey. The genre industry has become slightly obsessed with ‘twists’ over the years, so it was nice to just see a very beautifully written plot just be executed, not turned into some condescending expose.
I agree that Heath’s role wasn’t fantastic. I’d prefer to remember him as the Joker. Haven’t seen District 9 yet, but shall do soon. (:
Two movies I really want to see .
And I second that District 9 recommendation. Fantastic movie (the lead role was played by the director’s non-actor mate)
@Elena: Moon is just amazingly ace. I would call it my best film of 2009, but then again I haven’t really seen very many other movies this year (probably Last Ride would be the only other one in contention). One thing I forgot to mention was that it uses hand-made models and I freakin’ love hand-made models in movies. Even though they’re quite a lot better than they used to be, they give such an excellent retro feel to it.
Oh man, I love that, the non-actor thing. Heh, though how pissed would you be if you applied for the role? Beaten out by a friend of the director who isn’t even an actor! :D
yay hand-made models!
reminds me of the good ole’ days (i.e. Jurassic Park, with mechanical dinos and no cgi bullshit)
i think the director had a fair call – he was initially hired to do the Halo movie, but got scrapped at the last minute because the producers didn’t want to “risk ruining the brand name” on a newbie
Ew, a Halo movie? The storyline in the game isn’t exactly cerebral. I’m thinking it will end up being a pale shadow compared to the bright, shining light of awesome that is the original Starship Troopers. :D It’s a pity they didn’t really follow the book (which is utterly brilliant), but it’s so bad it’s good! I can’t imagine that the money will want that sort of thing happening in such a big name franchise.