In which I watch....stuff [Part One]

Specifically, Moon, Being Human, Ponyo and Glee. Heck, maybe I'll even throw in Veronica Mars. Spoilers ahoy!

Came down with a cold a few days ago and so haven't done much over last few days other than watch...stuff. Because I've been struggling all day to get this damn thing finished, I've decided to split it into two posts. Later, I'll attempt to review the TV series I'm currently watching. Today, I'll look at the two films I'm seen recently.

First, we finally got round to watching my Christmas present: Moon on DVD. Having heard nothing but praise for it, I was really looking forward to it, and boy does it not disappoint. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the lone worker at Lunar Industries base on the moon, harvesting helium-3 to be sent back to Earth for use in the fusion plants which provide most of the planet's energy. He is nearing the end of his three year contract and looking forward to returning to his wife and daughter. His only company has been the base's AI GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) and he's going a bit stir crazy....

The film is beautifully atmospheric (yeah, yeah, ironic etc. ha ha); the slightly creepy incidental music, slow pace, lack of dialogue and Spacey's emotionless AI voice all add up to give it that 2001 vibe early on. The model work gives it a timeless feel too - CGI dates movies more than anything else and I'm sure this one will look just as good in ten, twenty years time. Having been spoiled on the clone issue, I was surprised at how early that was revealed but then I feel one of the strengths of this film is that way it supersedes expectations. A set-up of a lone person on a deserted base often leads to a horror/thriller style film, for instance. One might have expected more conflict between the two clones, but they start to work together quite quickly once they realise their position. And it was wonderfully refreshing that GERTY turned out not to be evil or mad after all, but resolved its conflict of interest by siding with the clones it was programmed to help. And yet that still didn't rob the ending of any tension as I desperately hoped that Sam would get away before the arrival of the "rescue" team. Another strength would be the lack of explanations - leaving things to the audience to work out both makes them feel clever and leaves open the possibility of a theory that is better and more water-tight than your own. So very little is revealed about the science behind both the helium-3 harvesting and the cloning/memory-implanting, which is great because then nothing in the film is objectively wrong. It's never explicitly stated that the clones have a three-year life span, just heavily implied. If you choose to believe that this is nothing inherent but is instead due to radiation poisoning and new-Sam will live a full and healthy life on Earth, then fair enough. It makes an already quite upbeat ending all the happier. And while it's fairly obvious that simulating moon-strength gravity for the entire film would have been technically difficult and unfeasibly expensive, no attempt to shoehorn a mention of artificial gravity into the script was made, leaving the viewer to make up their own mind as to whether it all "actually" took place in low gravity or not. (At least, that's one way you can think of it. I'd vote "no" as the treadmill and skipping wouldn't work too well in low g.) The only confusion that came from not having things spelled out for us in our household was that we weren't sure whether Eve's dad was meant to be the original Sam Bell or not: the one sentence he spoke wasn't enough for me to recognise the voice and Sam had admitted Tess had been leaving him, but then Eve also confirmed it was "the Bell residence" so maybe that should have been enough of a clue. Overall, I think it's a wonderful, thoughtful film and the disgraceful lack of Oscar nominations belies the idea that they reward merit rather than popularity.

Yesterday we made a family trip out to the cinema. It was fairly packed (being half-term) but we still got our pick of seats to see Ponyo - Miyazaki's latest about a young boy who befriends a magical fish-girl. Despite being "rescued" by her father, the fish-girl Ponyo wants to become a human and escapes to find her friend Sosuke again. Her transformation throws the world into imbalance however, and floods the island Sosuke lives on. After travelling to find his mother, Sosuke affirms his love for Ponyo as a human or a fish, and she agrees to give up magic to become a human child.

Definitely aimed towards the younger portion of their usual family audience, it's more a Totoro sort of film than Spirited Away say, with a simple story and much of the delight coming from the astonishingly accurate portrayal of young children. The visuals are as rich and luscious as ever, the characters are all like-able and Sosuke's relationship with his mother in particular warmed my heart (hmm....I wonder why?). Miyazaki's recurring theme of the damage humans do to the environment is revisited, and while the portion of their journey where they identify extinct fish now magically brought back to life may seem a little too pedagogical it is exquisitely drawn and captures the childlike wonder that is appropriate for such a scene. You do have to remember to switch off your adult brain as the story doesn't particularly hold up to real world scrutiny (what sane mother would leave two five-year-old children alone in a house while a storm hits?) and the ending might seem a little anti-climactic with no real peril (compared to a heart-stopping moment or two earlier). Once you do, you realise it has the same sense of magic, adventure and wish-fulfillment that young children put into their own stories (albeit with a more coherent narrative), and for that, it is the perfect children's film. And I suspect like many other Studio Ghibli films, it will be one we watch time and time again.