Moon is has a similar theme with Brazil which deals with complete control by a central authority, and the protagonist trying to escape it. In Moon, Sam's life has been planned out for years, with him being killed after three years of service, and a new clone being brought to life. This systematic lifestyle is also shown in Brazil through the paperwork that has to be completed for every action, and people only able to do what they are specifically assigned to do. The biggest differentiation between these two films is (possibly) in their endings. In Brazil, Sam Lowry is able to escape the control of the central authority through his imagination, and we are made to think that Sam has successfully escaped at the end, but it is soon revealed that this too is merely a delusion. Sam is not physically able to escape from the cylindrical room, but mentally, Sam is able to escape from the central authorities, so it is hard to say whether he was able to "escape" control. The difference with Moon is that Sam Bell is able to physically escape from the mining base at the end of the movie. However, the ending is fairly open ended, and the audience is not told whether he reaches Earth, and what happens after he reaches our planet, and there are also thousands of other Sam Bell's stuck in the mining base left to continue the three year cycle.
Moon and Blade Runner both play with the concept of memory. The Sam's have implanted memories from the original Sam Bell as a way to incentivize the clones to work the three years. Sam has a family to look forward to at the three years, and is what helps him to get through loneliness and boredom until he is ultimately killed at the end of his service. On the other hand, memory is used as a way to differentiate between Replicants and humans in Blade Runner. Replicants are identical to humans except in their increased agility and strength, and the fact that they don't have memories past a certain point in time. In Moon, Sam is able to figure out that they are probably clones since they look the same, and also have exactly the same memories. I found it interesting that memory is used as the differentiating factor for both of these films.
So do our memories make us human? GERTY sacrifices his memories to protect Sam2, remember?
ReplyDeletePS You need to watch the ending of Moon more carefully.
ReplyDeleteI think the way memory is used in both Blade Runner and Moon is much more similar than you are talking about. In both films memory fails the characters at a certain point. When Sam first meets his clone and is asked about how long he has been working on his model town, Sam struggles to remember. The memories stopping after a certain point I didn't see as a way to differentiate between Humans and clones, but simply as a way to convince the Replicants, and Sam, that he was human giving him the memories to live off of.
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