GIVEN the number of “astronauts” who cross our cinema screens, it seems remarkable that up until now no one has thought to tackle the real-life spacemen who make Hollywood’s wildest imaginings seem tame. The Apollo moonwalkers came from nowhere, achieved fame on the most surreal trip imaginable, and then disappeared, often without trace. When I came to write my book Moondust five years ago, no one had done it in print, either: if I had £1 for everyone who’s asked me why not, I could buy a rocket and go myself.
Between the summer of 1969 and Christmas 1972, NASA’s Apollo programme sent just 12 men to the moon, only nine of whom are still alive. No one has even been out of Earth orbit since. What’s more, the Apollo team worked with less computing power than sits behind the dashboard of a modern car, using equipment of dubious reliability.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first landing happened three weeks before Woodstock, and the last moonwalker, Gene Cernan, left the lunar surface as Watergate loomed. Apollo’s place in our cultural history is beyond dispute. Had that first landing failed – as it so nearly did – imagine how different our image of the 1960s would be.
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The first thing to say about In the Shadow of the Moon is that it’s superbly made and cleverly shot. Archive footage has been painstakingly sifted and remastered, making the grainy shots sparkle as never before. What’s more, although Armstrong’s “small step” remains the most frequently broadcast piece of film in the world – just as the “whole Earth” photo Apollo 17 brought back is the most reproduced image – later missions were watched by diminishing TV audiences and are rarely seen.
So while we recognise the “magnificent desolation” (Aldrin’s endearingly awkward phrase) of Apollo 11’s landing zone, virtually no one will recall the vista that greeted Apollo 15’s crew: Hadley Rille, an ancient canyon flanked by the smooth slopes of mountains, the highest of which, Mount Hadley, reaches almost 5 kilometres into the ink-black sky. When one of the NASA staff described the sight as “unearthly”, he wasn’t exaggerating. How wonderful to see it on the big screen again.
The film’s selling point, however, is the astronauts themselves. Aldrin and Cernan are familiar sights on the space-heritage circuit but others, like Mike Collins, the command module pilot on Apollo 11, are very seldom seen in public. The film’s genius is to present them in close-up, tight to the camera, with their every twitch and grimace visible as they recall their journeys.
“The astronauts’ every twitch and grimace is visible – in close-up”
Where the film falls down badly is in its lack of context and backstory. In the Shadow of the Moon presents an ossified, Disney-esque version of a story far more extraordinary than you would ever guess from watching it. Apollo’s almost farcical origins, its cost, ambiguous legacy and reliance on ex-Nazis are presented glibly, if at all. Worse, the film-makers’ strict “in their own words” approach meant that some astronauts’ stories are omitted: Jim Irwin reckoned he heard God talking to him on the surface of the moon, and quit NASA on his return to become a missionary, but his death in 1991 precluded his inclusion. And while the film reveals Edgar Mitchell’s epiphany during his flight back to Earth on Apollo 14, it omits that he is now a New Age guru in Florida.
Similarly, the post-mission nervous breakdowns, divorces, retreats into silence and colourful post-flight careers are for the most part absent: almost nothing is here to disturb the conventional comic-book view of these men’s exploits. Perhaps this is why the film is playing so well with American audiences at a time of war and uncertainty.
For people who remember the moon landings, director David Sington provides a powerful trip down memory lane, full of heroism and derring-do. If you want a broader, more universal view of Apollo, then the astronauts alone are not the ones to provide it. The upshot is a decent film, but also a wasted opportunity.
Sputnik’s Legacy – Learn more about humanity’s first 50 years in space in our .
