Duncan Jones: ”Wasted time is at the heart of Moon 2112”
Duncan Jones made his amazing debut film, Moon 2112, because he was tormented by sadness and a sense of the meaninglessness of being. And this sci-fi changed his life. Since the release of the picture on the screens, three terms have passed in the life of its main character, Sam Bell. The audience remembered Luna 2112 as a showcase for Sam Rockwell's performance benefit and an example of a brilliant result that can be achieved despite difficulties.Spoiler alert! Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an engineer who performs highly specialized work on an isolated space station located in the far corner of the moon. Sam knows that he is just a cog in a huge corporation, but he has no idea how much of a spare part he is. The hero is anxiously awaiting the end of a three-year business trip and returning home, but after an accidental accident of a lunar rover and oversights on the part of the management, he unexpectedly finds out that he is a clone, the expiration date of which expires along with the term of the working contract. This is not so much a spoiler as some kind of lead to a truly beautiful spectacle: watching Sam Rockwell play several roles and convey two very different characters, acting in the modest conditions of the small rooms of his lunar home. The actor shows two sets of emotions, switching from one mood to another and jumping from one image to another faster than lunar gravity allows.  The tape premiered in 2009 at Sundance. The film subsequently garnered a bunch of prestigious awards, including a BAFTA Award for Best Debut. To mark the tenth anniversary of Luna 2112's release, Sony re-released the film on Blu-ray, and director Duncan Jones told the story of its appearance and what the movie means to him now.Luna 2112 "came out when we were quite young, and watching the film then, of course, we enjoyed it, but may not have seen the real depth. Now, after ten years in the adult world, this story becomes truly understandable to us. The idea of endless repetition and personal destruction in the course of work is extremely obvious. It seems that you tried to convey this very idea ... I am old and tried to present an allegory of two completely separate moments. One of them dealt with long-distance relationships and the resulting frustrations and difficulties associated with trying to maintain a spiritual connection with someone on the other side of the world. This is exactly what I was going through then. And the second point was my graduate school. I ended up in college in the Midwest, not really knowing what to do with my life. In fact, I just followed my girlfriend to graduate school in Nashville, Tennessee. And I ended up at Vanderbilt University, doing graduate school in philosophy, and spent three years there, absolutely hating it all and not wanting to be there. And after three years, I suddenly realized that I wasted a chunk of my life doing things I didn't want to. So for me these things - long distance relationships and wasted time - are something truly personal and deeply felt. Those feelings of mine formed the basis of the script.  How many years did you work on the script before starting work? Oh, it all happened insanely fast. I went to Sam Rockwell with the script for The Mute, which we did shoot on Netflix years later. I wanted Sam to play in this picture. He liked the script and decided to work with me, but in a different role. I tried to convince him to play the character I chose. And even though it didn't work, he and I got along really well. So, in fact, I started writing the script for "Moon" after that meeting, because before talking with Sam, I had no excitement. After nine months we had a script ready, and then three months of filming. Thus, we shot "Moon" in a year.  How did you manage to do everything so quickly? Many people take years to write something worthwhile. It was like one of the flashes of consciousness and some kind of insight after a very specific discussion with Sam about which film we would like to make. We're both in love with these old sci-fi movies from the seventies and early eighties, so Sam had a clear idea of the guy he was going to play. We knew what the atmosphere of our cinema should be, and I had very strong feelings in connection with the internal troubles in my personal life, which I wanted to throw out into something. So in a creative sense, all the components were ready, and then, after discussing the practical points with my producers, everything fell into place. It was something like, "Ok, here are the frames to fit into." Probably, it will be possible to collect so much money. Therefore, we want the cast to be smaller. Here is the studio, where we have friends who will help us. So, here are the ingredients available. This is a rebus. Solve the puzzle. So for me personally, the main question when writing "Moon" was "how can I put together all the pieces of the puzzle?" You had the concept of distance communication. Where did the clone line come from? From a practical point of view, it was important to me that I could offer Sam Rockwell as an acting task that would really attract and interest him. After all, the very idea that an actor can play with himself is an absolute professional challenge for any representative of this profession. You have to be good at everything, since you are the one and the whole cast. You need to keep the viewer's attention and drag all the action on yourself. And then, from a personal point of view, as a student of the Faculty of Philosophy, I noticed an interesting fact: during his life every person changes and, in fact, at different times is a different person. Going back to the time of my graduate school, I can confidently say that the guy I was before those three years is very different from what I became after. You go through your personal stages and from time to time become different people. What if all these versions had the opportunity to meet? Will they like each other? Or will they drive each other crazy with their differences?  Is that how you ended up with two versions of Sam? One of the really useful waste of money that the producers allowed us was a week of communication with Sam Rockwell and his friend Yul Vasquez. The three of us really dug into the script, trying to figure out what three years of total isolation means, whether it’s a time in prison or in graduate school in Nashville. What will this time do to you when there were no other people around and you could reflect as much as you like, change, grow as a person and realize your own shortcomings? How do you react if you meet an old version of yourself? Would it be disgusting that she does not understand what exactly is wrong with her? There are many options for the development of a conflict, when someone who has understood something is trying to reason with someone who has not yet learned it. For example, an older brother who says, "Dude, don't get drunk and drive, that's a bad idea, don't do it." But there is also a younger version, which answers: "Nonsense, I can do anything and will live forever." It is interesting to bump the heads of these two and see what comes of it.  Sam's first clone, who is the eldest, is actually pretty low-key. Personally, I would be quite furious if I revealed such an unpleasant truth ... I think he is so calm due to the fact that his resource has already been exhausted, he simply begins to refuse, to fail. In addition, he gradually realizes that everything is decay, and that what surrounds him is only a false facade covering the unsightly underside. The younger still has the energy and anger to say, "This isn't fair, I'm going to fix this." Despite the fact that the elder thinks: "Okay, so this is how it should be." The elder seems to be alive, but already a little broken. He just doesn't have the strength to fight anymore. And the younger has energy, and most importantly, he is armed with information that he would never have had if the elder had not provided it to him.  You filmed ten years ago. How did you manage to get Sam to play with himself? There is a certain set of professional tricks that are applied in different situations depending on the desired result. There are costly methods, there are cheaper ones. Since our budget was limited, we had to use ingenuity and jewelry to arrange tricks during the entire filming process. The main thing is that it looks natural and the audience does not feel deceived. In the end, the younger Sam returns to Earth and reveals all the hard-hitting facts to the public, resulting in serious problems for Lunar Industries. I think if something like this happened today, it would be a one-day scandal that would be forgotten very quickly. No need to say. If you only knew what I sometimes carry on Twitter, you would understand what I think about this ... Source: SyFyWire The Topic of Article: Duncan Jones: ”Wasted time is at the heart of Moon 2112”. |
