Tag Archives: David Bowie

Solitary Confinement: Moon

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Moon movie poster

 

Moon is a rare sci­ence fic­tion thriller that doesn’t derive its ten­sion solely from the spec­ta­cle of space­ships, robots, or off­world locale. Rather, it’s a psy­chodrama about para­noia, in the Philip K. Dick tra­di­tion of Blade Run­ner, Minor­ity Report, and A Scan­ner Darkly (not to men­tion the count­less movies Dick indi­rectly inspired, such as Dark City, 12 Mon­keys, and The Matrix). Moon’s futur­is­tic trap­pings hide sev­eral onion lay­ers of deeper themes: bioethics, tor­ture, labor exploita­tion, and ques­tion­ing the nature of the self and one’s per­cep­tion of reality.

Direc­tor Dun­can Jones (aka Zowie Bowie, son of David Bowie), shot Moon on an extra­or­di­nar­ily eco­nom­i­cal bud­get of $5 mil­lion, achieved largely by restrict­ing pro­duc­tion to sound­stages and sub­sti­tut­ing prac­ti­cal minia­tures for costly CGI. A ben­e­fi­cial side-effect is a pleas­ing tac­til­ity lack­ing in most con­tem­po­rary sci-fi films, where entire char­ac­ters and envi­ron­ments are now rou­tinely vir­tual. As a beat-up moon rover slowly trun­dles across the uneven lunar sur­face, kick­ing up dust, bump­ing and rat­tling all the way, it feels real because it is.

Duncan Jones' MoonOur circuit’s dead, there’s some­thing wrong

As his character’s name Sam Bell implies, Jones con­ceived the role with Sam Rock­well in mind. Rock­well was great in Con­fes­sions of a Dan­ger­ous Mind and Match­stick Men, and is great here. He must hold the screen vir­tu­ally alone for most of the film, and Jones was right to hype him for an Acad­emy Award nomination.

Sam is a blue-collar miner and the sole occu­pant of a par­tially auto­mated base ded­i­cated to strip-mining the dark side of the moon for a com­pound needed back on earth for clean power. It may sound like tech­nob­a­b­ble but in fact the sci­ence is sound: Helium-3 is a real ele­ment believed to be plen­ti­ful on the moon and the­o­ret­i­cally may some­day pro­vide a sus­tain­able source of energy. But in the true sci-fi dystopian tra­di­tion, Sam’s employer Lunar Indus­tries turns out to be as insid­i­ous as the Weylan-Utani cor­po­ra­tion that exploits the Nos­tromo min­ing plat­form crew in Rid­ley Scott’s Alien.

Lunar Indus­tries boasts of prof­itably sav­ing the Earth’s envi­ron­ment by pro­vid­ing clean power on the cheap, made pos­si­ble by engag­ing in prac­tices that are arguably immoral but com­monly accepted. The exploita­tion of cloned life is a direct par­al­lel to today’s out­sourc­ing of labor to devel­op­ing coun­tries with more lax human rights. If one won­ders how a future soci­ety might be so inured to cloning that they would con­done Sam’s servi­tude, media broad­casts over­heard at the end of the film spill the beans: no, they don’t (that is, if we’re opti­mistic and assume what he hear is real — it’s pos­si­ble they’re the fan­tasy of a dying man imag­in­ing his moral vic­tory). But per­haps it’s like how many in the west­ern world live now; we enjoy afford­able con­sumer elec­tron­ics and cloth­ing man­u­fac­tured by work­ers that lit­er­ally live inside their fac­to­ries, and don’t ask why our pur­chases don’t cost more. Jones told Sui­cide Girls that Moon is the first part in a pro­jected tril­ogy, so per­haps we will see pre­quels or sequels that flesh out a world where human cloning is a fact of life.

Kevin Spacey in Duncan Jones' MoonGERTY ROTFLMAO

Sam’s mad­ness and phys­i­cal dete­ri­o­ra­tion is par­tially explained within the sci­ence fic­tion con­text as a result of the inher­ent insta­bil­ity of cloned life. Appar­ently, like early exper­i­ments with ani­mals like Dolly the sheep in 1996, clones are more prone to dis­ease, organ fail­ure, and pre­ma­ture death (Dolly sur­vived about half the nor­mal lifes­pan for a sheep). Like the “repli­cants” in Blade Run­ner, these clones come with built-in expi­ra­tion dates. But then, don’t we all? While Blade Runner’s Dekker comes to terms with his true nature through escape, Sam instead chooses to confront.

Dis­cov­er­ing he is merely a com­mer­cial prod­uct with inbuilt obso­les­cence is just one of Sam’s prob­lems. His quar­ters and work­space look like they might have once been as clean and white as 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Dis­cov­ery One ves­sel (or the inside of an Apple Store), but have long since become stained and soiled with the filth and grit of the many Sams that came before him. Also like the Dis­cov­ery One astro­nauts, Sam peri­od­i­cally receives pre­re­corded video mes­sages beamed from earth. These asyn­chro­nous con­ver­sa­tions are not unlike email, and a poor sub­sti­tute for real human interaction.

You don’t have to look far for a metaphor: the com­mon prac­tice of soli­tary con­fine­ment is increas­ingly rec­og­nized as a form of tor­ture. The har­row­ing New Yorker arti­cle “Hell­hole” by Atul Gawande recounts how a psy­cho­log­i­cally sta­ble per­son can go mad in a mat­ter of weeks or even days with­out human con­tact. We first meet Sam three years into his tour of duty.

Sam Rockwell in Duncan Jones' MoonI am oblig­ated to make a lame “Sam I Am” joke some­where in this review, so here it is

Sam’s inter­ac­tions with the base’s com­puter GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) are like­wise reduced to the rudi­ments of online com­mu­ni­ca­tion; its “face” is com­prised of happy/sad/neutral emoti­cons. GERTY is a rar­ity in sci­ence fic­tion: a com­pas­sion­ate exam­ple of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Count­less movies (includ­ing 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Wargames, The Ter­mi­na­tor, I Robot, et al.) have trained us to expect arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences to be inher­ently evil or, at least, dan­ger­ously unsta­ble. But GERTY is more like David (Haley Joel Osment) in A.I.: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Robby the Robot in For­bid­den Planet, or Wall-E: an arti­fi­cial cre­ation that rigidly fol­lows its pro­gram­ming, but whose para­me­ters allow it to exhibit gen­uine com­pas­sion and car­ing for its charge.

I loved the movie over­all, but was dis­ap­pointed by the lack of ambi­gu­ity in its sto­ry­telling. The trailer reveals more than I would have liked to know if I had watched the movie cold, and the movie itself reveals its secrets very early by quickly drop­ping the word “clone.” Would it have been more inter­est­ing had there been hints of a pos­si­bil­ity that Sam might be delu­sional, hal­lu­ci­nat­ing a clone, and was in fact alone the whole time? Maybe I’ve been con­di­tioned by too many Twi­light Zone episodes, Fight Club, and M. Night Shya­malan movies, but I expected a twist end­ing that never came.

I’ve touched on sev­eral of Moon’s more obvi­ous inspi­ra­tions, but I’m also reminded of Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris remake, in which a clone-like crea­ture mur­ders his orig­i­nal. Cloning is just begin­ning to enter the zeit­geist, hav­ing recently fig­ured into the brain­dead actioner The Island but also the more con­tem­pla­tive Never Let Me Go, based on the highly regarded novel by Kazuo Ishig­uro. Clones may very well prove to be the next zom­bies or vampires.

Offi­cial movie site: www.moon-movie.com

Buy the Blu-ray, DVD, or Clint Mansell’s excel­lent sound­track CD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Scratching in the Dirt: Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back

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Peter Gabriel Scratch My Back

 

As a Peter Gabriel fan for over two decades, it’s dif­fi­cult to admit that I find myself strug­gling to appre­ci­ate his first new album in years.

There have always been three core things to love about Gabriel’s work: his lit­er­ate song­writ­ing, metic­u­lous sound­scapes, and emo­tion­ally expres­sive voice. Behind the creep­ily organic album art, Scratch My Back is an exper­i­ment in sub­trac­tion. It finds Gabriel cov­er­ing other artists’ songs, accom­pa­nied only by solo piano or orches­tra (the oddly defen­sive mar­ket­ing pitch “No drums, no gui­tars” says it all). That leaves only the voice. Soul­ful and grav­elly even as a teenage cofounder of Gen­e­sis in 1967, Gabriel’s voice should be more than enough to jus­tify any­thing, so my pat reduc­tion here is not totally fair. Gabriel and John Met­calfe clearly labored over these orches­tral arrange­ments, but I miss the com­plex son­ics of the rock and world music instru­men­ta­tion that has char­ac­ter­ized most of his music for over 40 years.

Gabriel did very nearly the oppo­site a decade ago, when his high-concept mil­len­nium project Ovo made a point of cast­ing Paul Buchanan and The Cocteau Twins’ Eliz­a­beth Fraser to sing his songs. The most recent col­lec­tion of his own songs was 2002’s Up, fol­lowed in 2009 by the col­lab­o­ra­tive project Big Blue Ball. Casual fans of his music might not be aware that Gabriel is an active human­i­tar­ian, par­tic­u­larly as cofounder of Wit­ness and The Elders, so the tem­po­ral gap between his musi­cal ven­tures is not entirely explained by chronic pro­cras­ti­na­tion (although he would prob­a­bly be the first to admit he’s eas­ily dis­tracted). Gabriel has stated that he hopes to work on more song-swap projects in the future, but first plans to work on some of his own songs. How long until he pre­pares a new album over which he can claim sole authorship?

Peter Gabriel Scratch My Back

Gabriel told the New York Times:

“I was try­ing to make a grown-up record […] This is treat­ing peo­ple as if they can han­dle dif­fi­cult music and words. Not that I’ve courted the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor before, but there’s a play­ful­ness and child­ish­ness in some of my older work that isn’t present on this record.”

He is pre­sum­ably refer­ring to the media satire of “Games With­out Fron­tiers” and “The Barry Williams Show”, the randy sex romps “Sledge­ham­mer” and “Kiss That Frog”, and the vaude­ville silli­ness of “Excuse Me” and “Big Time”. Gabriel is one of the few musi­cians that I first lis­tened to as a teenager, but whose music has aged with me. So I would have expected myself to appre­ci­ate an album of him cov­er­ing many songs that I know and love well (par­tic­u­larly David Bowie, Lou Reed, Elbow, and Talk­ing Heads), but I find that I don’t know what to make of Scratch my Back even after repeated listening.

Many song­writ­ers lose their dark edge as they age (case in point: Pink Floyd’s once tor­tured, prickly Roger Waters is now a big smi­ley softie), and by all accounts Gabriel should have been fol­low­ing that track too. After leav­ing Gen­e­sis in 1975 to deal with fam­ily issues, his first four solo albums were increas­ingly dark and sin­is­ter. But 1986’s So marked a notice­able turn­around in tone and an appar­ent psy­chic heal­ing. Now report­edly still pals with his old Gen­e­sis cohorts, aging grace­fully into a pot­belly and gnomish goa­tee, remar­ry­ing, father­ing two new sons, and rec­on­cil­ing with his two daugh­ters from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage, he seemed to be trans­form­ing into a cud­dly grand­fa­ther fig­ure. A trickle of releases over the past decade showed him favor­ing directly-worded songs for chil­dren, includ­ing the Oscar-nominated “That’ll Do” (from the movie Babe), the unsub­tle “Ani­mal Nation” (from The The Wild Thorn­ber­rys Movie), and “Down to Earth” (from Wall-E).

Sud­denly, he appears to have reversed back into depres­sive ter­ri­tory. Nearly every song cho­sen for Scratch My Back has been trans­formed into a mourn­ful dirge. Espe­cially when lis­tened to in one sit­ting, I find many of the inter­pre­ta­tions to be too depress­ing, and I actu­ally like depress­ing music. My favorite exam­ples along these lines are Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ cry-your-guts-out cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” (from the movie Don­nie Darko), and Elbow’s ago­niz­ingly heartrend­ing ver­sion of U2’s “Run­ning to Stand Still” (from the War Child ben­e­fit album Heroes).

Peter Gabriel Scratch My Back

Gabriel’s ver­sion of The Mag­netic Fields’ “Book of Love” has appar­ently become some­thing of a sen­sa­tion on YouTube, licensed in tele­vi­sion shows, and played at celebrity wed­dings. Per­haps I’m cold­hearted, but it does absolutely noth­ing for me. Song­writer Stephin Mer­ritt says his ver­sion was sar­cas­tic, while Gabriel’s is deadly serious:

At first I thought, How hilar­i­ous, he’s got a com­pletely dif­fer­ent take on the song. But after a few lis­tens I find it quite sweet. My ver­sion of the song focuses on the humor, and his focuses on the pathos. Of course, if I could sing like him I wouldn’t have to be a humorist.

Did Gabriel just plain miss Merritt’s point, or did he inten­tion­ally trans­form it into some­thing sen­ti­men­tal, singing the same words but alter­ing the instru­men­ta­tion and deliv­ery? All that said, some­thing to cher­ish in Gabriel’s cover is the pres­ence of his daugh­ter Melanie on back­ing vocals.

Elbow’s “Mir­ror­ball” is one of the most rav­ish­ing love songs I’ve heard. Elbow remixed Gabriel’s “More Than This” in 2002, pro­vid­ing a more organic rock struc­ture to Gabriel’s per­haps over-processed stu­dio orig­i­nal. But Gabriel does not return the favor here, turn­ing their gor­geous love song into a depres­sive bummer.

The once case where Gabriel’s bummer-o-vision may have actu­ally been appro­pri­ate is with Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bub­ble”, which actu­ally does have very dark lyrics.

The orig­i­nal record­ing of David Bowie’s “Heroes” boasts an unfor­get­table lead gui­tar line from Robert Fripp, which by his own rules Gabriel must sub­tract. He sings Bowie’s Berlin-inspired lyrics in cracked, anguished tones, not an emo­tion I asso­ciate with the song.

The one song I liked imme­di­ately was “Lis­ten­ing Wind”. The orig­i­nal is one of the odder tracks on Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light, and Gabriel rather amaz­ingly draws out a catchy melody embed­ded in the exper­i­men­tal song.

The Spe­cial Edi­tion includes a sec­ond cd with four bonus tracks: a cover of The Kinks’ “Water­loo Sun­set” and alter­nate ver­sions of “The Book of Love”, “My Body is a Cage”, and “Heroes”. It might have been inter­est­ing to also include some of Gabriel’s past cov­ers, includ­ing The Bea­t­les’ “Straw­berry Fields”, Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”, and Joseph Arthur’s “In the Sun”. I would have also very much liked to hear instru­men­tal mixes of some of Metcalfe’s orches­tral arrangements.

Offi­cial Peter Gabriel site: www.petergabriel.com

Buy the Scratch My Back Spe­cial Edi­tion from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.