Mirror/Mirror – “God’s Lonely Man”
(In this weekly column, I’ll take two films, one old and one new, and compare them in terms of theme and substance, hopefully in some interesting ways. I’ll be trying not to spoil too much of these films, but in order to dissect them properly I’ll have to venture into spoiler territory a little.)
(Minor Spoiler Warning for Moon and Taxi Driver follow)
Duncan Jones’ debut film Moon, released in June of this year, features despondent astronaut Sam Bell (played with precision and immense talent by the under-appreciated Sam Rockwell). After devoting the bulk of three lonesome years to a helium-harvesting operation on Earth’s moon, his sanity begins to slip — another Sam has arrived on the solitary space station “Sarang,” his intentions unknown. Is he merely a delusion, or is something more sinister standing between Sam and his return home?
Thirty-three years earlier, another fledgling director was trying to stake a foothold in the industry, and Taxi Driver started him well on his way to a career of masterpieces. The landscape that Martin Scorsese created for Robert DeNiro’s eerie and lonesome Travis Bickle was not unlike Sam Bell’s moon, in many respects, but far more familiar to the everyman. Bickle, the definitive antisocial xenophobe of cinema, was a reflection of the city that created him. Without family or friends, he turns his late-night shifts as a cab driver into an outlet for repressed violence and aggression.
It’s remarkable how both films meditate on the subject of loneliness and longing in separate ways, while each still feeling relatable — or at least understandable, in the case of Taxi Driver. Moon’s Bell has all the elements that Bickle desires — a family to return to at the end of his lunar stint, friends (we assume), a career with security and respect. However, both characters watch and fail to grasp these things from behind a glass wall. Bell is separated from his loved ones by a span of many thousands of miles, Bickle is separated from love itself by a psyche of distrust, jealousy and anger.
The dividing line between the two characters is an end goal. Sam Bell has a family to return to, and a mystery to solve: who is this man who appears to be a mirror image of himself? This goal drives him forward through his loneliness and madness — hell, the conversations he has with himself resemble Travis Bickle’s journal monologues in Taxi Driver; he occasionally vents his frustration on his alternate self like an athlete with a punching bag. And although he first leers at his duplicate from behind a pair of aviators, dissecting him from a distance, he later becomes a valuable asset to his mission to return home.
Bickle has no home, no end goal. His loneliness is inescapable because of a loosened grip on humanity and relationships. Unlike Bell, he has no outlet, and can spar with no one but himself. Thus, the astronaut seeks to solve his problems while the taxi driver turns to violence. One lashes out while the other seeks solace, but both suffer from an unnerving and disabling solitude.
Moon is still in theaters. It’s a beautiful independent film, with a fantastic Clint Mansell score — director Duncan Jones has a great eye for composition and an even better sense of tone. Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver was nominated for four Academy Awards. Its display of urban decay and post-Vietnam War-era distress has earned it a reservation in the United States National Film Registry.
