What would it be like to find out you’re a clone?

Some spoilers ahead!

For this week’s sci-fi movie analysis I’d like to discuss the movie Moon (2009). It features Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey (as the voice of GERTY, a quite emotional robot) and is the debut of director Duncan Jones (the son of David Bowie), who also wrote the story.

The plot summary:

With only three weeks left in his three year contract, Sam Bell is getting anxious to finally return to Earth. He is the only occupant of a Moon-based manufacturing facility along with his computer and assistant, GERTY. The long period of time alone however has resulted in him talking to himself for the most part, or to his plants. Direct communication with Earth is not possible due to a long-standing communication malfunction but he does get an occasional message from his wife Tess. When he has an accident however, he wakens to find that he is not alone. He also comes to realize that his world is not what he thought it was.

Watch the trailer here [Youtube link]:

Sam Rockwell usually plays bad guys (The Green Mile, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and you might also know him from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Zaphod) and before I saw Moon, I didn’t think of him as a good actor. However, since I watched Moon I now think he’s a marvelous actor and simply didn’t get the freedom to show it in the other movies. Also, this was Duncan Jones’s debut as a director and he’s shown he is quite able. He has also directed the 2011 movie Source Code, to which I’m looking forward to see!

Sam  is (aside from 10 seconds of film of his wife and child) the only character you see in the entire movie. You’d think this would get boring, but no. This movie has a grand plot which is pretty haunting. I’ll try not to spoil too much.

Sam quite quickly discovers that something is horribly wrong at the base. As mentioned in the plot summary, he gets in an accident, after which he’s returned to the base and when he recovers, he doesn’t remember anything about the accident itself, which according to GERTY is quite common.

Shortly after that, he finds out that he’s not alone on the base. He returns to the crash site, where he finds himself still lying in the vehicle. A clone. He is a clone.

The movie is about his struggle with himself (both his identity and the other clones). Sam wants to go back to Earth, go back to his wife and daughter, but he can’t, because the “rescue team” is coming – to kill him.

Have you ever considered the notion that you might be a clone? What would it be like to know that there are one or more exactly like you? Would it conflict with or alter the ideas you have about your identity?