Waking Up

In the opening credits, the first Sam Bell clone to be formally introduced is running on a treadmill and wearing an ironic t-shirt.  Oddly enough, I developed an interesting ideological reading upon my consideration of the relationship between these two seemingly disparate pieces of Moon’s mise-en-scene to one another and the relationship between these pieces and the whole of the film’s form and function.

On the surface, the treadmill serves as a reference point that distinguishes between the physical well-beings of the Sam Bells, illustrating the deterioration that occurs across the duration of their three-year contracts on the moon.  We see the first Sam Bell clone (in actuality #5) use the treadmill a second time and stumble exhaustedly.  Soon after, while we don’t see him use the treadmill, the newly awakened Sam Bell is at his peak physical performance: we often see him working out in some manner or another, whether it be jump-roping or hitting a punching bag. 

The treadmill’s meaning stretches beyond the physical fitness of the characters and creates a motif: the illusion of progress.  The Sam Bell clones are literally running in place.  They are awoken only to serve their three-year contracts and are motivated by false promises of a life on Earth.  This illusion of progress extends to the harvesting project itself: the collection of He3 on the moon is presented at the film’s inception as the Holy Grail of clean energy.  “The Power of the Moon, the Power of the Future” appears to be just as invasive as the practice of mining fossil fuels on the Earth.  Furthermore, there is a sly intimation that the He3 creates a radioactive byproduct that causes the clones to deteriorate in health over the course of three years.

Wake me when it’s quitting time.

The t-shirt has a more immediately powerful impact as we learn about the three-year life span of the clones and how a new one is “awakened” every three years to replace its incinerated predecessor.  While the shirt makes its first appearance sweat-stained on the first Sam Bell clone running on the treadmill, the shirt makes an ominous reappearance in the drawer of an unawakened clone.  The shirt’s “Wake me when it’s quitting time” echoes the dark themes of human mortality presented in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, where Leon Kowalski commands of Rick Deckard: “Wake up, it’s time to die!”

The combined significance of the treadmill and the t-shirt is startling: the Sam Bells unknowingly dismiss the concept of their impeding mortality through the illusion of progress.  The initially inconsequential naming of the harvesters after the four gospels of the New Testament obtains a greater gravitational force in the realm of the film’s ideological or symptomatic meanings as the film may be making a statement about religious struggle.  The Bells persevere through their stay on the moon only because they are promised a life on Earth after their service: in a sense, they overlook the significance of the present life and emphasize the potential of another one to follow.  This can be read as a statement about the emphasis on an afterlife present in many religious followings that seemingly downplay the significance of life itself, as if life were a transitional experience, a proverbial waiting room to another realm.

The clones’ communication with the outside realm is prevented, most notably through the inability to establish a live connection with the Earth’s base and through the repeated lines of the computer system emphasizing this inability: “Searching for long range comms…searching for long range comms…signal failure on long range comms.”  Moreover, prior to the incidental overlap of the two clones’ lives, much of their day-to-day activity was marked by an insular nature (ie, playing ping-pong by themselves).  The attempts of Sam Bell to connect to this other-worldly realm seems symptomatic of a spiritual crisis. 

Biblical allusions exist throughout, not only through the “good news” harvesters but through the motif of resurrection allusions as well.  For instance, the injured Sam is retrieved from the wreckage 3 days after his crash and sacrifices his life for the other clone to make an escape to Earth.  Overall, Duncan Jones’ Moon appears to be making an interesting statement about the predicaments of the human psyche that manifest as illusory worldviews are increasingly deconstructed and an understanding of the human existence must be reconstructed.