Wednesday 21 December 2011

moon : staying alone with yourself


How long can you stay alone?
I am sure you can stay long, but if I start my question again and add some more words to it then your answer might change.

How long can you stay alone in your house?

How long can you stay alone in your building without a single person in it?

How long can you stay in your colony without anyone?
.
.
. . . . These questions can go on and on till the time you’ll get bored and close my blog without reading it further, so let me cut the chase and come to a straight point.

Can you stay alone on a planet or the moon?
Can you stay
alone on the moon, all by yourself?

The answer would be difficult to come to an unanimous verdict but people can answer what ever they want.
Some might think this as an escape to all their problems and worries on earth and would readily live on moon for sometime.
Some would say it’s a bad idea and they won’t be able to part away from their loved ones for such a long time.
Some would merely find it stupid and discard the question.

But there was a man who took this decision, Sam Bell. He was contracted to work on moon for three years by Lunar Industries .
Sam Bell worked alone on the lunar base with an artificial assistant named ‘Gerty’ 

Sam’s job was to oversee the automated harvesters which extracted helium-3 from the lunar regolith. He periodically sent full canisters to Earth, where the helium-3 was used to generate much-needed clean fusion energy.

Due to some Chronic communications satellite problems, Sam couldn't contact on earth directly, he had to depend on sending and receiving recorded messages as the only means of communication.

When Sam’s contract was to be finished in about two week’s time, a strange thing happened. Sam began to hallucinate, he started seeing a teenage girl on the station.

One day while retrieving a canister, he saw a figure standing on the surface of the moon. This distracted him and made him fall, crashing the rover into the harvester. This resulted in the harvester losing air and Sam finding it difficult to breath. Sam had hurriedly put on his helmet before losing consciousness.

Sam awakened in the base infirmary,
asked GERTY if he remembers the accident which put him there. A series of incidents and events occurred which turned Sam suspicious and he start looking out for answers by himself.

Sam managed to sabotage a gas pipe in the base to convince GERTY to allow him outside to check for "micro-meteoroid damage
". In this way he got out of the station and went to the accident site. When he reached to the damaged harvester, he was shocked to see himself lying in the harvester.

Sam wondered who was lying there, when he was already saved from that accident. He took that injured and almost dead Sam lying in the harvester to the base, where Gerty saved the injured Sam and identified them both as Sam Bell.

The two Sams then struggled to come to grips with each others existence, each believing the other to be a clone. And also questions arise about Sam Bell’s real identity, his contract and his existence

Directed by then debutant director Duncan Jones, who would later go on to direct Source Code. Moon was written by Jones himself and Nathan Parker, this film was the best of its kind.
Sam Rockwell gave an quite impressive performance, while playing Sam Bell.
It currently holds a 90% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 173 reviews, and holds an 8.0 rating on IMDb, ranking in the 'Top Rated "Sci-Fi" Titles'.

20 comments:

  1. Astronomy has always tantalized our wildest of imaginations.From strange creatures such as Aliens,Abominable Meteoroid crashes to simple yet intelligent living creatures,these have fascinated our imaginations indeed.
    Keep the Juice flowing mate !

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  2. well said... so finally, shall i watch that movie ?? worth watching ?
    http://deepakkarthikspeaks.blogspot.com

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  3. @Amit : Thanks,astronomy has always been my favorite talk.
    Maybe u can check out,

    http://insanemoviegeek.blogspot.com/2011/08/are-we-alone.html

    @ DeEpAK KaRtHiK (420): It's worth a watch, what I have described here is only half of it, you can watch it and have a complete ride of thrill and suspense.

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  4. Great post.....Moon is a excellent sci-fi movie and also a underrated movie.

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  5. Thanks, Arun. It proved that high budget and huge star cast is never a necessity to show an excellent story.

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  6. @Anubhav Sharma : Thank you, I am glad you liked it. :)

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  7. Never found this movie.. Now I will search for it again. Good review.

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  8. @ Farida Rizwan : Thank you, do watch it. :)

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  9. Nicely written..makes me wanna watch the movie..

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  10. @ Ana : Thank you, I hope you would watch it soon. :)

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  11. Great Leo... So you finally decided to write and post something... N a good one too... :)

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  12. @ Vishal Kataria : Leo?
    Anyways thank you, but I think you are mistaking me with someone else.

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  13. Sounds like another movie I just have to watch.

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  14. its a brilliant movie! sci-fi doesn't necessarily have to shape shifting robots (transformers) such movies rarely come by..!

    i recommend stanley kubrick's 2001 a space odyssey..way way way ahead of its time!

    nice review! and incidentally, my blog theme is the same, except iv customised my banner with my own theme!

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  15. @ Ramakant Pradhan : Yeah, you can.

    @ Jayanth : Yes, you are absolutely right.
    2001 A Space Odyssey was much ahead of its time. Kubrick was a genius.
    Saw your blog, and guess what Jayanth, Nolan and Kubrick are my two most favorite directors.

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  16. I remember something similar in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but a lot different from this as well. Nice review (although i came to know at the very end that you were talking about a movie. I thought it was some true story which I was unaware of! :)

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  17. Thank you, Antarik. :)
    2001: A Space Odyssey was an epic. You take any sci-fi movie made after that(which are based in outer space), they will have something or other in common with it.

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  18. I have become a fan of Duncan after Source Code... the ideas are really fresh and make you wonder.

    Thanks for sharing this.

    Cheers !!

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  19. Thank you, Saquib Kazi.
    Duncan is no doubt here to stay for long and make his mark.
    Expectations from him have got doubled after Source Code.

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