Next Monday, July 20, marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. It’s an event at once hoarily historic and strangely futuristic, like a Jules Verne story that actually happened. It marked the end of the Sixties, in a way, the last great act of the decade that brought us the Beatles, the Civil Rights Act, the Vietnam War, and so many other touchstones of today’s world. It was also a uniquely American success, and wouldn’t you know it the first guy to leave his small step in the dust was named Armstrong.

Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell in "Moon"

In the couple years following the moon landing pop songs began to take a look at what one might call the dark side of the astronaut’s life. Harry Nilsson, now but little known, was a major pop figure after his breakthrough album Nilsson Schmilsson, with its hits “Coconut” and “Without You.” His 1972 follow-up Son of Schmilsson was a bust, but it included “Spaceman,” with lyrics such as “You know I wanted to be a spaceman / That’s what I wanted to be / But now that I am a spaceman / Nobody cares about me.”

Nilsson’s song never really went anywhere, but that same year a singer-piano player named Elton John came out with “Rocket Man,” his biggest hit to date, which similar complained about the false romance of space travel: “And all this science I don’t understand / It’s just my job five days a week.”

Both songs were technically preceded by a tune called “Space Oddity,” released in 1969 as an early single by David Bowie and actually used by the BBC in their coverage of the moon landing. There is some question whether or not Bowie was actually singing about space travel with lyrics like “I’m stepping through the door / And I’m floating in a most peculiar way / And the stars look very different today,” but that’s another story.

All this is a very long-winded way of getting around to discussing Moon, the new movie now playing at the Rialto Lakeside in Santa Rosa. The connection, of course, is that Moon is the first film from director Duncan Jones, the son of David (Jones) Bowie. And like Major Tom – and the narrators of the songs by Nilsson and John as well — protagonist Sam Bell is a good man just doing his job, who finds that life in space isn’t quite what he expected.

With visuals and themes harkening back to 2001: A Space Odyssey (itself an inspiration to Bowie’s song), Moon finds us on the far side of the Earth’s only natural satellite mining H3, a helium isotope used as a power source for the mother planet. Though we are told that 70% of the Earth’s energy needs are met by H3, there is curiously only one person – Sam Bell – and a smooth-talking robot named Gerty running the operation.

Bell, ably played by Sam Rockwell, is nearing the end of his 3-year contract on the dark side of the moon, tending to the daily routines with waning enthusiasm. He occasionally gets a taped message from his wife and daughter on Earth – the live link has been broken by a solar flare, he’s been told, so transmissions have to be relayed from the Jupiter satellite – but his only real company is Gerty, voiced by Kevin (wait for it) Spacey. Every now and then he ventures out in a dusty old spacesuit to drive a lunar tractor across the dust to pick up whatever H3 the roving mine ‘dozers have accumulated.

But as his departure date nears, his nocturnal dreams begin to cross over into his waking hours, and he begins to hallucinate people who aren’t there. Gerty solicitously asks if he’s feeling okay, but Sam still seems pretty capable, though over the first 20 minutes or so of the film he does begin to lose his edge in barely perceptible ways. Then, on a routine mission to pick up another load of H3, he loses focus as another hallucination distracts him, and is buried in the gravel raining down from the mining rig.

He wakes up in the infirmary; somehow Gerty must have rescued him, although we’re never quite sure how. Although weak following his apparent rescue, he seems eager to get back to work, but Gerty tries to keep him inside for further tests. Sam figures out a way to get outside, however, and drives directly to the scene of the accident that buried him. Inside the disabled tractor, he finds…

Moon is not really a complicated movie, and to go further would detract from its puzzles and rewards. It successfully builds on its set-up, and the skillful, smart performances of Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell and Sam Bell, evolving into a psychological and even ethical fable. Like the best science fiction films, its themes are far more profound than laser swords and Wookies, and its spare yet exotic locale permits these themes to absorb us.

As the 40^th anniversary of the lunar landing approaches, Moon serves to remind us that whatever scientific or patriotic accomplishment we celebrate, there are less admirable forces at work behind the sheen of success.

Hey mother earth,
Won’t ‘cha bring me back down,
Safely to the sea
But ’round and around and around and around,
Is just a lot of lunacy.
– Harry Nilsson, “Spaceman”