In The Shadow Of The Moon Review :: Night Sky Observer

In the Shadow of the Moon (DVD/HD-DVD)

Starring: Colonel Buzz Aldrin, USAF, R, Captain Alan Bean, USN, R, Captain Eugene Cernan, USN, R, Brig. Gen. Michael Collins, USAF, R, Brig. Gen. Charles Duke, USAF

Update, June 2009: In the Shadow of the Moon is now available on Blu-Ray in the United Kingdom. It's unclear if it will play on Region A or Region C machines.

Countless documentaries have attempted to capture the essence of what it was like to fly to the moon during the glory days of the Apollo program. Some have been fairly successful, but usually still feature the standard talking heads and grainy umpteenth-generation film footage. One notable previous exception was Al Reinert's 1989 work, "For All Mankind." This was the first attempt to get Apollo footage onto a large theater screen, and is regarded favorably by most who had the opportunity to see it in that format.

Now, nearly 20 years later, we finally have a worthy successor in David Sington's "In the Shadow of the Moon." You might think you already know everything you need to know about the Apollo space program that galvanized America in the 1960s. But this remarkable documentary proves you wrong.

Where the For All Mankind left us wanting much more, this time around we finally get that which we've been waiting for so long. Beautiful and rarely seen footage has been taken from the archives at NASA, transferred to high-definition video, and given new life in a way never before imagined.

It's funny to think how much the '60s, in hindsight, seems a relatively low-tech era: no cable, no Internet, no videogames, no mobile phones, no iPod. The space program, more than anything, helped to lay the groundwork for the age we're now in, and In the Shadow of the Moon doesn't hide the apocalyptic botched test launches or the tragedies (a trio of astronauts perishing in a capsule fire) that set the stage for the lunar-landing program. The vulnerability that the astronauts felt is there in the homespun eloquence of their recollections.

A large failing of For All Mankind was that it glossed over the launch phase of the largest rocket booster ever to successfully fly: namely, the Saturn V. In the Shadow of the Moon, on the other hand, does the Saturn V proud. Numerous pieces of launch footage, including the spectacular top-of-the-gantry, wide-angle camera from the Apollo 17 night launch in December 1972, are highlights of Sington's superb film.

But getting off the Earth was just the beginning. The astronauts take us on a journey as they cross cislunar space, drop down onto that forbidding surface, conduct scientific experiments that have laid the foundation for our present understanding of our place in the universe, then blast off the moon to return to Earth. Yet even then, the journey is just beginning.

At least astronaut from each Apollo lunar mission speaks about their thoughts and feelings about their apocryphal experiences. These are not glossed-over propaganda statements, but heart-felt and honest reminiscences from these men, giving us insights that have never before been the subject of a space documentary.

Not only do we get to see Apollo footage as it has never been seen, and to hear the astronauts express themselves as never before, but they have gone one step further by marrying the sound and film from Mission Control. We are all so familiar with the words spoken by Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the dusty lunar surface, and the voice from Mission Control that answers him (it was actually Charlie Duke), so it may come as a surprise that all film footage inside Mission Control was silent. The producers found the audio loops and painstakingly matched the voices to film for the first time ever. This is a memorable feat that may go unnoticed by many viewers, but from a historical perspective, it is a welcome show of the filmmaker's diligence with "In the Shadow of the Moon."

Gene Cernan spoke of going "into darkness after being in daylight the whole time - and we're in the shadow of the moon."

Cernan's comment provided the title of his movie, and it is a perfect one. Cernan has proven himself one of the most eloquent writers and speakers on his experiences. He talks about what he thought when he heard President Kennedy commit America to a moon landing in less than a decade: "He challenged us to do what I think most people thought was impossible, including me."

And yet, Cernan saw the dream Kennedy presented to the USA in that heady dsecade and hopped aboard for several memorable flights, including as commander of the last Apollo flight to touch down on the moon, Apollo 17.

Jim Lovell is now most famous for being the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13, but few remember he was also aboard the first flight beyond the confines of the Earth - Apollo 8 - which sailed over the Moon in 1968. "Just from the distance of the moon, you can hide the Earth behind your thumb, everything that you have ever known; your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself, all behind your thumb. It makes you consider how insignificant we really are.", he says.

Some of the more interesting comments come from an astronaut who never actually walked on the surface of the moon, Apollo 11 Command Module pilot, Michael Collins: "To me, the marvel of it is that it all worked like clockwork, I almost said 'like magic.' There might be a little magic mixed up in that big clock somewhere, because everything worked as it was supposed to. Nobody messed up. Even I didn't make mistakes. I have a lot of things I can do wrong, but the consequences, should I do them wrong, are going to be immediately obvious to three billion people." (Yes, the population of Earth in 1969 was just half of what it is today!)

I was a kid when the manned space program was beginning. And I remember us kids playing out on the road and being called in to the nearest house to watch the latest rokcet launch. It was a big deal back then, exciting and entralling. An then in the wee, small hours of a memorable morning (European time), watching in awe, as did most of the world, as first man hesitantly put his foot on another world. Those born afterwards have had nothing of comparison in their lives. Moon landings are a few pages in the history books for them (if they even believe they happened); they never were able to register the gut feeling of watching this happen in real time so many decades ago. With "In the Shadow of the Moon, " everyone alive today will get at least some of the feelings those of us of the Apollo generation got to feel first hand.

What better way to inspire the new generation for our return to the moon and subsequent expansion into the cosmos than by giving them a shot of adrenaline from the pioneers who first took us there?

Six-time astronaut and Apollo 16 moonwalker, John Young puts some of this in perspective when he discusses his view from space. "There's a lot of things like urban pollution, and you can see that when you hit orbit now. You can see that big cities all have their own set of unique atmospheres. We ought to be looking out for our kids and our grandkids. [Instead] what are we worried about? The price of a gallon of gasoline."

Seeing our Earth from space, then moving beyond that, is one of the best ways to understand our home planet and to make it safe for future generations. After all, it was the views from space in the 1960s and early 1970s that launched the environmental movement. Without Apollo, would we have the global perspective we enjoy today? Only when you can block out an entire world of billions of people with your thumb, as Jim Lovell said, can we truly see what we have to deal with.

Overall, however, the real virtue of In the Shadow of the Moon" is its reminder that basically we have no interest in the space race today. The program is plagued with technical problems, flights are more regularly cancelled than completed, and our collective interest in space flight now falls somewhere between the attendance of Transformers on its eighth week in theaters and that fifth story on the Yahoo news roundup, below the one about the letter from Davy Crockett that sold for some unimaginable amount on eBay. Our obsession with celebrity "culture, " not to mention our increasing fascination with tabloid-style headlines about normal folks' personal woes, occupies so much space on the news landscape (much less our hearts and minds) it seems little wonder that we're no longer looking to the stars.

Further testament to this is the fact that even our movies -- that barometer for our interests, measured in box office receipts -- have turned inward, exploring extraterrestrial influences only insofar as they affect us (see: Transformers, Rise of the Silver Surfer). The fantastic hardly seems so now because we're too busy paying attention to Lindsay Lohan's underwear (or more accurately lack thereof). But In the Shadow of the Moon, rather than cursing our present, celebrates our past and offers an occasion of hope for our future.

Sington may have created a film which to the casual viewer feels as if we've seen and done it all before, cinematically speaking. But as far as real life and real possibilities are concerned, In the Shadow of the Moon touches on the tip of a great and still virtually unexplored iceberg, and one that not only can melt our hearts but our currently frozen imaginations.

In the Shadow of the Moon is, in fact, the perfect primer for the entire world to show us all how important space exploration is to our future as a species. Everyone should sit back and enjoy this film for exactly what it is, a celebration of Apollo, and also for what spaceflight can aspire to be again.

Note: In the Shadow of the Moon was only released on standard DVD in the U.S. In Europe, it was also released on HD-DVD (one of the last in this format). If you have a HD-DVD player, you can still order the HD-DVD release of this movie from Amazon.co.uk. HD-DVD titles are region free so will play on any HD-DVD player in the world.

"In the Shadow of the Moon" Trailer