Fifty years and a couple days

It would have been really clever if I’d managed to see Apollo 11 on Sunday night as I’d originally intended. While that would not have been July 20^th here in Australia, it would have barely qualified as the waning hours of July 20^th in the U.S. – well, in Hawaii anyway. But I could only find showings that fell smack in the middle of the kids’ dinnertime, a period of high parental activity in which I try not to schedule conflicts.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I cast my net a little wider and found two theaters about 25 minutes from my house showing the documentary at 8:35. So it was 50 years and a couple days after the moon landing that I got to see the blow-by-blow recreation of it.

It’s nice that at least Australia released the film in conjunction with the anniversary, having debuted it back on July 11^th. In the U.S. it hit theaters on March 1^st, which, just … why? I mean, I know why, which is that documentaries don’t gain a lot of traction during the summer movie season, even one as limp as this one. (Limp summer movie season, not limp documentary.)

But it’s just the latest in a failure to correctly synchronize movies about July of 1969 with July of 2019. Last year saw two such movies, the Ted Kennedy movie Chappaquiddick and Damien Chazelle’s First Man. Why either of these movies couldn’t have delayed production just a little longer and come out this year, I may never know. (Maybe it was again a seasonal thing for both movies, only one of which should have ever realistically been considered an Oscar contender. If they’d waited for this year’s Oscar season for First Man, it would have missed the anniversary.)

Anyway, wow.

I’m not reviewing the movie for my website – too bad, because my editor gave it only a 7/10. But that allows me to be a bit more free-form in my thoughts, which is nice. (And to include both of the preambles I’ve already included.)

I would have given it a 10/10, and did give it five stars on Letterboxd. Which isn’t to say that it’s going to be my favorite film of the year, or even that it’s currently my favorite (it’s parked at #2 right now, but a couple movies behind it may ultimately leapfrog it). The perfect score is rather a gobsmacked appreciation of how perfectly this movie is conceived and made.

I’ve never been one to gobble up information/histories/available video footage of the moon landing, even though I often refer to Neil Armstrong jokingly as “Uncle Neil” (we share a last name). But I never would have guessed that enough footage existed of all aspects of this mission as to make a nearly complete video diary of it, with only a few reliances on still photography, and as many scenes as a narrative filmmaker (say, Damien Chazelle) would have made if making such a movie. The problem with a documentary recreation of any event is that video cameras wouldn’t have captured most of it, and even though this was probably the most watched event in the history of television – perhaps maybe even to this day (well, 9/11 would give it a run for its money) – there figured to be inevitable holes in the coverage where we’d need to jump forward in time if we wanted anything like a complete dramatization of the events.

Well, the reason why the film is such a revelation is that much of this footage was, actually, recently revealed to us when we didn’t know it existed. Maybe we did know and they just never released it. In any case, much of what we’re seeing here is stuff that’s never been seen before by the general public. Which is the enthralling thing about the movie. You’re seeing 50-year-old footage that should have been in the public record but never was, and because it has been cleaned up and digitally remastered (I imagine), it looks as though it was just shot yesterday. There’s a weird and glorious feeling of time travel while watching this movie.

I won’t say that every moment held my attention. That’s not a criticism of the film, but more an indication of the state of mind it places you in. Because there is no narration – the significant quantity of dialogue comes from available audio clips from the time – there’s no single guiding voice keeping you on track. Therefore, your mind can wander a bit, and mine did. Never for more than a minute or so, and never in a way I found displeasing. It was an experience I was immersed in, and though the narrative is strong and clear, it’s perhaps not of paramount importance to be engaged in every moment. It should just flow through you and wash over you, and if you start thinking about the things you have to do tomorrow for a minute or two, that’s okay.

It goes without saying that the images we haven’t seen before – the specificity of them, the unlikelihood that they would have ever been captured in the first place – are the most astonishing takeaway of the film. But let me pause to acknowledge the only way that modernity encroaches on the film, and how spectacular I found it. The score is the modern creation of a man named Matt Morton, and it’s no mere high-minded orchestral accompaniment. No, it uses all the rumblings and discordant sounds of a Mica Levi to increase the tension in particular moments, and my does it do that well.

The other thing I want to say is how much this makes me actually understand what was involved in a trip to the moon, beyond what I’d ever bothered to understand in the past. I understand which parts of the craft were jettisoned at which stages, and why they were no longer needed. (Though I’m not sure what happened to the Eagle when it was jettisoned near the moon – did it crash into the moon or did it just become space junk?) I understand how long everything took. I understand what speeds were reached. I learned, for the first time I think, that the rocket that launched from earth actually orbited around the earth at least once before slingshotting itself toward the moon. Dummy that I am, I thought it had just headed directly out from earth and reached the critical acceleration necessary to break free from the atmosphere in a single direct shot. Up and out are, of course, not the same thing in aeronautical terms.

And I also learned that things I thought were bullshit in Damien Chazelle’s movie actually were not. Like, I had no idea why, and thought it extremely unlikely that, the Eagle was running out of fuel as it approached its landing, and had only 16 seconds of fuel left when it touch down. (Nor do I understand why fuel is measured in seconds.) Apollo 11 does not necessarily explain the why, but it confirms the that, which I had thought was a liberty taken in First Man in order to increase the tension. I guess it must have to do with exactly how little room the Eagle had for inessentials, and could only fit the amount of fuel necessary to land the craft, without much margin for error based on needing to change landing spots or the like. (And I guess it used different fuel to take off again? Or could that just be accomplished through one of the “burns” they keep talking about?) Anyway, even though I found this vastly superior to First Man as a cinematic experience, it did increase my appreciation of that movie as well.

Side note to mention it was funny/fun seeing a young Johnny Carson watching the launch from Cape Canaveral.

I’m really glad I did my best to see this in the theater and wasn’t defeated by the disadvantageous showing time at the local cinemas. The screen I saw it on wasn’t huge, but it was big enough to inspire awe. Though I’m sure such a thorough and wonderfully realized film would inspire awe even on an iPhone.