As a defining moment in the development of modern man, the Apollo space missions to the moon and back captured the imaginations of not only America, but the entire world. “It was a bold move, and it had some risky aspects to it. But it was a time when we made bold moves,” says Buzz Aldrin in In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary on the surviving Apollo astronauts. The film manages to encapsulate the idealism and skyward gaze of the space age much as Neil Armstrong’s first lunar proclamation, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” captured the international consciousness in July 1969.
Granted unprecedented access to NASA’s archives — the original reels shot on the moon’s surface are preserved using liquid nitrogen — director David Sington liberally weaves in period footage and, while often verging on innocuous IMAX-matinee territory, the film’s saving grace comes in the faces of the astronauts themselves, still in awe of their time in orbit and of the moon itself.
There are few cinematic sights that can match the power of these early rocket launches — crowds of thousands gathered around the launch site, the first steps of each crew on the moon’s surface, the first sight of the Earth rising above the moon’s horizon. It’s every bit as staggering now as it was nearly 40 years ago.
“Just from the distance of the moon, you can hide the Earth behind your thumb,” remembers Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and, more infamously, 13) in one of Shadow’s most moving sequences. “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, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy living here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.”
Still, as a portrait of a lost time in American life, Shadows isn’t always altogether complete. The Vietnam War is largely glossed over (although one pilot admits his guilt at going to space while his friends were shipped out to firebomb villages and rice fields), as is the tragedy of Apollo 1, in which three pilots perished in a flash fire during a test run of the ship’s equipment. A misguided attempt to combat the long-held conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked (“Why would we fake it nine times?” asks one pilot) oddly takes place during the closing credits. Despite his occasional missteps, Sington knows the film’s power stems first and foremost with the astronauts themselves.
If Shadows eventually steers towards preachy environmentalist terrain, the words of the Apollo pilots gather gravity upon the audience’s realization of their role in the last gasp of true American innocence. The film’s posters ask if we “remember when the whole world looked up,” and given the state of the world today, it’s easy to wish we’d take a little more time doing just that.
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