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APRIL // MAY 2019 • IDAHO SENIOR INDEPENDENT
Entertainment
MUSIC•BOOKS•THEATER•DINING•ART•FILM•TELEVISION
Movie Review: Apollo 11
BY AARON PARRETT
Perhaps there is no better way to sum-
marize the state of the world than to
simply observe that, 50 years ago, human
beings traveled across 240,000 miles of
space to walk on the moon, and today
almost no one cares.
Worse, recent polls show that as many
as 20 percent of Americans think it was all
a hoax. Welcome to the age of the Internet.
Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11 may change
that. Using his access to over 20,000 hours
of archival footage and sound recordings,
including some never-before-seen 70mm
film, Miller created a documentary for the
50th anniversary of the first moon landing
that makes the moonshots suddenly vivid and
relevant now 50 years later.
In 2016, Miller produced what I consider the
best of all the Apollo-related documentaries, The
Last Steps. It documents the accomplishments
of Apollo 17, the last of the missions, featuring
interviews with one of the most articulate of
the astronauts, Gene Cernan.
Cernan literally left the last footprints on
the moon.
That film has more standard documentary
feel, relying on interviews and after-the-fact
reminiscences and predictions about the
future of space travel.
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But Apollo 11 consists entirely of actual Collins’s sincere joy at being reunited with
footage shot in July of 1969, capturing not the moonwalkers after their mission conveys
just the immensity of the Saturn Rocket the true humanity of the NASA astronauts, who
that sent Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and often seemed to act like over-trained robots, who
Michael Collins to the moon, but the mood and might easily have been replaced with robots.
excitement of the thousands of people who Similarly, one of the most memorable
lined the causeways at Canaveral to witness scenes in the film occurs as Armstrong and
the historic launch. Aldrin descend to the moon in the Lunar
In this respect, Miller has brilliantly cap- Excursion Module. The spacecraft had only
tured the 1960s zeitgeist, from row after row flown once before in moon-gravity and had
of computer banks manned by engineers in never been tested for actual landing.
white shirts and horn-rims to the families of Because of a boulder field at the landing
onlookers tailgating with beer and cigarettes site, Armstrong had to fly beyond it by hand
as NASA methodically readies the ship. controls, using every second of fuel he had
With no voice-over narration aside from in reserve.
Walter Cronkite’s contemporary newscasts, At the last possible moment before an
the film nevertheless manages to make a “abort” would have been necessary, he gently
statement about the deep contrast between set the fragile craft down and issued the
then and now. historic announcement, “Tranquility base,
Then when Americans seemed united in a here, Houston. The Eagle has landed.”
singular purpose in spite of whatever political Meanwhile, the film documents the ship
differences they might have had. Now when surgeon’s data on the health of the astro-
political polarization overshadows the possibil- nauts: Armstrong’s heart rate soared to 160
ity that Americans might again work collectively beats per minute during the crucial moments.
to solve problems of astronomical proportions. Apollo 11 will rekindle your faith in
The film also captures the drive and almost American ingenuity and the possibilities of
superhuman resolve of the astronauts them- our country working together again.
selves: Michael Collins circled the moon for Although the moon may not have much
more than a day, a quarter-million miles from to offer, except as a stepping stone, the
home, while Aldrin and Armstrong descended accomplishment of the moon voyages ought
to the lunar surface, surely making Collins the to tell us something about our ability to solve
loneliest human being in history. our Earth-based crises as well. ISI
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