In the Shadow of the Moon
When you get very close to launch, suddenly it’s like someone turned on a big electric light bulb. You think, you know, “I think we’re really going to go. I think it’s going to happen. We’re gonna … LEAVE!” — Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins
“In the Shadow of the Moon” is a remarkable documentary that captures the seat-of-the-pants ingenuity and innovation that fueled the Apollo missions. With our space program a shambles, it’s all the more remarkable to be reminded that 40 years ago, we had developed the technology required to land on the moon and get back safely. Yes, the space race of the 60s was fueled by less-than-wholesome motives — competition with the Soviets for strategic domination of the skies and beyond. But as executed, the moon missions put a beautiful face on humankind. The rockets we would use to fly there, then-President Kennedy says in a telling clip, would include new metal alloys, some of which had not yet been invented. Within six years of that speech, we had invented them, so to speak. Realistically, it’s hard to top a moon mission — the next step in exploring the solar system, a manned mission to Mars, would take nine months each way, presenting huge logistical challenges. (Among other things, as my colleagues at The Associated Press reported, NASA would have to prepare for the possibility of both sex and death in space.) As a result, the Apollo astronauts interviewed for this British-made documentary remain, as the film puts it, the only human beings to have visited another world.
Director David Sington unearthed wondrous footage, and his technical skills are impressive. In the audio commentary, he describes finding silent footage of Mission Control, then synching it painstakingly to the audio he unearthed from another source. On screen, it’s seamless. Also among Sington’s gems: an appearance on the game show “I’ve Got a Secret” by Neil Armstrong’s parents. Their secret: “My son became an astronaut today.” The host, Garry Moore, even asks how they would react if Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. “I would just say God bless him, and I wish him the very best of all good luck,” Armstrong’s mother says.
The reclusive Armstrong was the only Apollo astronaut who did not agree to be interviewed. Sington tells the story of the Apollo missions in their words, without narration. They come through brilliantly. And one of the coolest things about this compulsively watchable movie — I rented it from Netflix, kept it for months and watched it twice, not including a run-through of the commentary — is that it gives a starring role to Collins, the guy who didn’t get to walk on the moon. At the time, orbiting the moon while Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin shuffled about below in their marshmallow-man suits, Collins was described as “the loneliest man in the universe.” He demurs, saying it was hard to feel lonely with Mission Control yapping in his ear all the time. Then as now, Collins shows no bitterness that he was passed over for a moonwalk. And he puts his experiences in context while recalling, in vivid language, the immediacy of the moment. What a spectacular rush it must have been to be part of the Apollo program. The risks were grave. The White House had prepared a statement that Nixon would read in case the astronauts were unable to return, left to suffocate on a foreign heavenly body. Collins notes how lucky he was even to have gotten such an opportunity: He was born in 1930, as were several of his fellow astronauts. He was the right guy at the right time, and he wore his good fortune graciously.