Jupiter’s Moon – first look review

It’s hard to think of a more bla­tant Hol­ly­wood beg­ging let­ter than Kornél Mundruczó’s weirdo, self-seri­ous genre mash-up, Jupiter’s Moon, which played in com­pe­ti­tion at the 2017 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. It adopts a sim­ple B‑movie plot line and intro­duces a moral­ly slip­pery cen­tral pro­tag­o­nist then, for two hours plus, runs track­ing shot rings around them as if the mak­ers have made a bet between them­selves to make each shot more need­less­ly bravu­ra than the last.

Indeed, the pile-up of intri­cate long takes often makes you entire­ly for­get the stuffy sto­ry­line, which is a con­tem­po­rary, noirish take on the Pas­sion of Christ, or some­thing like that.

In a severe open­ing title sequence, we’re told that one of Jupiter’s moons has a salt water sea that could poten­tial­ly sus­tain life, and that it is named Europa. We then open on the dark­ened hold of a wag­on packed with Syr­i­an refugees attempt­ing to enter Europe via Hun­gary. The focus remains on the cow­er­ing face of Aryaan (Zsom­bor Jéger) who knows that a sin­gle night time riv­er cross­ing is all that stands between him and his father’s new life.

But when the boats push off, the guns start to fire, and when Aryaan takes three in the chest, his body begins to lev­i­tate from the ground and above the tree line. He then engages in an ethe­re­al mid-air dance that evokes the late Joy Divi­sion front­man, Ian Curtis.

So with­in the open­ing five min­utes the film sets out its stall as a trea­tise on cos­mic colo­nial­ism, a real­ist polit­i­cal dra­ma and a reli­gious­ly-inflect­ed sci­ence fic­tion para­ble. When Merab Ninidze’s dis­graced doc­tor Gabor Stern is intro­duced, the film takes yet anoth­er turn, as he wants to co-opt Aryaan’s spe­cial pow­ers to help make some pock­et mon­ey from ail­ing fat cats. But when the secret gets out, every­one wants a piece of him, specif­i­cal­ly the trig­ger hap­py board­er patrol men who are con­stant­ly clos­ing in on the runaways.

This is a fast and frisky hash of strik­ing action set-pieces and less strik­ing pseu­do-philo­soph­i­cal dia­logue. Dev­il-may-care Stern feels like a char­ac­ter ripped direct­ly from a John Car­pen­ter movie, but he unfor­tu­nate­ly nev­er real­ly emerges from his one dimen­sion­al tough-guy-with-feel­ings shell. Weedy Aryaan, mean­while, is just plain dull, get­ting lit­tle to say or do between his lav­ish bouts of occa­sion­al­ly destruc­tive floating.

The film’s lack of focus can be seen in Mundruczó’s habit of hav­ing his cam­era tilt away from the main sub­ject to draw in a spu­ri­ous side detail. One rather dubi­ous shot sees him gaw­ping at a biki­ni-clad ass as a woman wades through a plunge pool.

Even though it’s not at all clear what Jupiter’s Moon is attempt­ing to say or do by the time its gun-pop­ping finale comes around, it takes no polit­i­cal sides when it comes to the issue of glob­al human traf­fic and the val­ue of a spir­i­tu­al life. This care­ful fudg­ing of any­thing that could get it pegged as pro­mot­ing one posi­tion over the oth­er might make Mundruczó a per­fect can­di­date for a Hol­ly­wood run out – espe­cial­ly as, above all else, this appears to take many of its nar­ra­tive cues from that Tin­sel­town peren­ni­al: the super­hero ori­gin story.