Albion Moonlight is a salesman, a finely-tuned corporate instrument who has never evolved to a state of independent personhood. The umbilical electrodes connecting him to his space capsule monitor his biorhythms. The ship's artificial intelligence continually prompts him for personal data.
When his capsule crashes, the computer system connecting Albion to The Corporation crashes too. The salesman is unwittingly born into the world of free agency. Having relied for so long on mental paradigms from the corporate employee handbook, he is initially unable to structure his own thoughts. The unfamiliar landscape in which he finds himself is the a priori system of archetypes through which newborn babies filter their experience.
A universe of binaries takes shape around him. His spaceship lies in a sun-scorched desert, but a lust for the sea floods Moonlight's brain. Appearing out of nowhere a frantic fellow salesman reiterates company policy. Must report. Appearing just as suddenly, a magnetic stranger entices Moonlight to rebel.
The story seriously questions whether humans can operate independent of the sign systems implanted in them by society. Even The Corporation's reprehensible acronym for a customer (Signature to Lease Unlimited Goods--SLUG) is less destructive than an absence of conceptual structures. Albion has no means of categorizing the two strangers in the desert, for example, and chaos results.
Concurrent events at Corporate Headquarters question whether escape is even possible. Is Albion's disappearance a corporate slight-of-hand?
MOONLIGHT BY THE SEA tackles questions weighty enough to level a movie of lesser craftsmanship. The black and white cinematography is selective enough to help distill the major existential themes. Low-key lighting camouflages the bare-bones sets. A roiling sound design--a la IRREVERSIBLE--keeps viewers vibrating uncomfortably in their seats. The acting achieves an effective balance between stylized role-playing and emotional revelation. The script evenly distributes the expository burden between dialogue and flashback. One or two speeches seem abruptly declarative, as did Albion's recitation of the four phases of a sales call. However, the four phases themselves were fascinating, and the sequence was well-edited, interlaced with glimpses of a glib, beaming Albion peddling aerosol satisfaction.
The film employs enough of a three-act structure to accommodate Western perceptual needs, but it also lapses into non-narrative segments, stranding us, like Albion, with our own disordered streams of consciousness.
When his capsule crashes, the computer system connecting Albion to The Corporation crashes too. The salesman is unwittingly born into the world of free agency. Having relied for so long on mental paradigms from the corporate employee handbook, he is initially unable to structure his own thoughts. The unfamiliar landscape in which he finds himself is the a priori system of archetypes through which newborn babies filter their experience.
A universe of binaries takes shape around him. His spaceship lies in a sun-scorched desert, but a lust for the sea floods Moonlight's brain. Appearing out of nowhere a frantic fellow salesman reiterates company policy. Must report. Appearing just as suddenly, a magnetic stranger entices Moonlight to rebel.
The story seriously questions whether humans can operate independent of the sign systems implanted in them by society. Even The Corporation's reprehensible acronym for a customer (Signature to Lease Unlimited Goods--SLUG) is less destructive than an absence of conceptual structures. Albion has no means of categorizing the two strangers in the desert, for example, and chaos results.
Concurrent events at Corporate Headquarters question whether escape is even possible. Is Albion's disappearance a corporate slight-of-hand?
MOONLIGHT BY THE SEA tackles questions weighty enough to level a movie of lesser craftsmanship. The black and white cinematography is selective enough to help distill the major existential themes. Low-key lighting camouflages the bare-bones sets. A roiling sound design--a la IRREVERSIBLE--keeps viewers vibrating uncomfortably in their seats. The acting achieves an effective balance between stylized role-playing and emotional revelation. The script evenly distributes the expository burden between dialogue and flashback. One or two speeches seem abruptly declarative, as did Albion's recitation of the four phases of a sales call. However, the four phases themselves were fascinating, and the sequence was well-edited, interlaced with glimpses of a glib, beaming Albion peddling aerosol satisfaction.
The film employs enough of a three-act structure to accommodate Western perceptual needs, but it also lapses into non-narrative segments, stranding us, like Albion, with our own disordered streams of consciousness.
