Jackass Critics

Far Side of the Moon

As luck would have it, I write this review as NASA is on the verge of sending another space shuttle into space, an event that I am sure will touch at least one child and inspire them to dream of the stars. Having grown up in an era that witnessed the birth of the space shuttle, of the Hubble telescope, and even the international space station, an era that is one of the most important in the scientific life of Mankind, but it’s hard to top the years that lead up to this era, when the space race had truly begun. For many, the dream of space and of being one of the few to touch outer space is something that inspires them, but for some, it can become something that traps them and keeps them from walking on the earth.

Tele-marketer Phillipe (director Robert LePage) has always fantasized about outer space and the world away from the earth. Since childhood he has been obsessed anything and everything that wasn’t part of his day-to-day life and space typified this. He harbored the same crush most boys have on their mother but that was changed with the birth of his brother, which changed the dynamic of the household. Both boys grow up and go on their way, all but identical twins but as men they have only their birth mother in common. When she dies suddenly the brothers are forced to deal not only with the dividing of her stuff but with each other. Phillipe is introverted and a dreamer, while his brother is grounded in harsh reality and is only interested in what things have to do with him. When Phillipe is chosen as an alternate to speak at a Russian conference on space travel it looks as if he will finally have the chance to prove his controversial doctoral theories true but can also be among the people he believes are his peers. To his dismay he arrives too late for the conference but finds that he wasn’t exactly brought there to be more than a controversial figure with radical ideas. Heartbroken, he resigns himself to failure but finds hope in the news that the tape he has made of a day in the life of a human will be sent among nine others, into outer space for extraterrestrials to discover. After a frustrating time avoiding his life, it is his life that allows him to reach out to the stars.

A beautifully made film, the magic here is in the direction and the acting. The direction grounds the otherworldly things that happen. The heart of the story lies with the brothers who, sadly, were they one man, would create a wonderful person. Separately, they are flawed at best. The acting is fantastic and shows the range and talent LePage has. This is definitely one of those instances where the direction and the acting are fantastic, if only the story were as tight.

The hell of it all is that, as good as the film is, it’s awfully alienating. It’s just hard to connect with what the story is getting to. The story meanders a bit and what the filmmakers are trying to say gets a bit convoluted. It’s not that the story is bad, at all, it’s just very hard to connect.

Far Side of the Moon is a very interesting, very beautiful film. It’s hard for the viewer to connect with the characters but the alienation stems from them, not the film. It’s about how we can create our own sort of outer space where we make it almost impossible for people to live in our bubbles. There is an air of sadness that’s hard to shake here, but which sheds light on our own bits of darkness that we sometimes never even notice.

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