In the Shadow of the Moon

For the awe inspiring documentary In The Shadow of the Moon, David Sington reunited surviving members of the Apollo space program, including eight of the twelve men the United States sent to the moon between 1969 and 1972.

The general outline of the Space Race may be familiar from TV documentaries, The Right Stuff, and Apollo 13, but Sington has a terrific asset: NASA only recently opened their vaults and he is the first filmmaker to make extensive use of never-seen-before footage. The digitally restored images of the launching rockets, the control center (painstakingly synced with audio recordings), and the surface of the moon are nothing short of breathtaking, especially when seen on a big screen.

One might have welcomed slightly more context, especially in the early parts of the film -- where did NASA come from? Who were these scientists and astronauts? -- but Sington made a choice to stick to the official narrative and not involve historians or other experts. The only voices we hear are those of the septuagenarian astronauts themselves; in the final analysis, the close-ups of their furrowed faces and their spirited and witty recollections are the true marvel in a film already full of unbelievable sights.

The reclusive Neil Armstrong is absent except in the historical footage, but Buzz Aldrin deliciously recounts of his "first" on the moon: while waiting on the Eagle's ladder, he urinated into his space suit. Other veteran astronauts speak of their newfound faith and describe their feelings of guilt at traveling to space while their air force buddies were getting shot down over Vietnam.

With humor, humanity, and staggering images, In The Shadow of the Moon brings home the sheer guts it must have taken to ride a rocket to a barren rock in the sky, and it effectively conveys the impact the experience had on the only people in history who have ever seen the Earth as a whole.