Blog

I was not expecting much from David Sington’s documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. This is nothing against Signton, of whom I’d yet to hear, but more the subject matter: the moon landing. There’s a very been there, done that feel to space travel now, and to think that there was some new insight to be had seemed unlikely.

Fortunately, I was completely wrong.

The inspiration for the film, as described by Sington in a Q&A after the screening, informs the premise. Of the six-and-a-half billion people on the planet, only nine have ever been to the moon, so it seemed like a good idea to him to, you know, talk to them. The result is the story of the Apollo missions as told by the astronauts who flew them.

The film does nothing more complicated than mixing old footage with new interviews, yet I was impressed by how potent (and beautiful) some of those old images still are. Yes, I did think of the early MTV spots when seeing the stages break away, but that only made me realize why MTV picked those images. Tying themselves to a revolutionary idea for a generation that didn’t have one.

And that is part of the goal of this movie; one of the younger audience members said she had no reference point for the events depicted in the film but once she saw them, she realized they had a power she never appreciated.

The film elucidates certain aspects of the “tired” story that I hadn’t appreciated. There’s the fact that while today - with a few tragic exceptions - space flight is considered to be routine, at the time rockets were about the most dangerous thing you could be around. A montage of spectacular exposions drives this point home in the film. There’s the fact that Kennedy (and his brother, for that matter) did not live to see the seed he planted grow to fruition under the administration of his nemesis, Nixon.

Then there are the three astronauts who died before the project even got off the ground. And the fact that in the final moments before the lunar module actually touched down, it seemed pretty certain that the whole mission would fail because they couldn’t find a suitable place to land in the narrow window of time they had to do it. And there’s the speech Nixon was to give if the first mission didn’t make it back. In one of the film’s more eeire moments, one of the astronauts reads it.

But Sington finds a global spin to the story that’s even more compelling. The context of the flight has America at war in Vietnam while at home the country eats itself from within. One of the astronauts even talks about his guilt at being in the space program while his air force buddies were being shot down abroad. However, even though a large part of the program was a race against the Russians and it was an American flag planted upon arrival, upon their return, astronauts saw in country after country they visited people saying “WE did it.” It was a global victory.

Now, watching this I’m thinking, “What a contrast with the way the world feels about America right now.” And I’m thinking, “What great achievement could America get behind today that would show the world the ways in which we don’t suck?” My answer was solving the global AIDS crisis.

Hold that thought.

In the Q&A, someone asked Sington if he deliberately pointed out the world reaction (he shows footage in many different countries of people reacting to the news of the landing and then greeting the astronauts on tour) as a contraast to the worldview now. His answer was that, in a sense, he did. His motivation to make the film had to with his fascination with America (he’s British) and to him, “This is America.”

The optimism and confidence that motivated the space program showed what America could be and served as a juxtaposition to the cynicism and fear that he felt motivated Vietnam. Today he sees the Iraq War born of decisions motivated by fear and uncertainty, but sees no juxtaposing mission motivated by optimism and confidence. His suggestion, however, was not AIDS. Wanna take a guess?

Climate change.

Sure enough, there are little bits and pieces of the movie in which the astronauts talk about the impact of seeing the Earth from an alien world and one of them points out how surprisingly fragile it seemed while another upon returning gained a new apprecation for how crappily we treat the planet and even pointed out that now, if you look at the planet from afar, cities have their own atmospheres.

That’s not to say that In the Shadow of the Moon is trying to be the next An Inconvenient Truth. It’s really not. But what it does try to do is to give the viewer a vision of an America that believes it can achieve anything both from the collaboration of the many and the individual strengths of nine brave citizens who are wiling to risk everything. And it succeeds.