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In the Shadow of the Moon

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by Kerry McLeod
David Sington’s documentary about the men who travelled to the moon nearly forty years ago won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and it’s easy to see why. A subject that has long captured the imagination told simply by the people that lived it, together with some truly spectacular footage from the NASA archive that looks magnificent on the big screen, is a something of a magic formula for a documentary.

“Between 1968 and 1972,” the film tells us, “nine American spacecraft voyaged to the Moon. The men on board are the only human beings to have visited another world.” In this film astronauts from every one of those Apollo missions tell their story, testimony and memories cut together to create one seamless narrative of man’s journey to the moon. In a style reminiscent of Errol Morris and his ‘Interrotron’ device, the men are shot in beautifully lit close-ups before the sort of cosmic swirl background familiar from school photographs. The aim, similar to Morris’, is to have the astronauts address the audience directly and it certainly conveys a sense of the seasoned raconteur telling a well-rehearsed and remembered tale.
The overall effect is measured, stylish and moving. The archive of 60’s America is so vivid and familiar it evokes nostalgia even in an audience member that wasn’t alive to witness these events the first time round and the incredible archive footage remains mesmerising, even when it’s footage that we think we’ve seen.

The tales are illustrated and punctuated by unquestionably beautiful and precious archive material, digitally re-mastered onto HD. In a single shot a camera attached to the back of a spacecraft captures the moment the craft separates; as the rocket detaches and disappears slowly into space, there’s a moment of nothing before, to the other side of the frame, a crescent of the earth appears, growing larger as it moves slowly into frame. It’s the sort of shot a feature director would rehearse over and over again, and time to perfection. Actually, it’s the sort of a shot that these days would be digitally generated. It makes it all the more jaw-droppingly amazing that this was a once in a lifetime shot, captured as it happened from the inside of a spacecraft as it left our planet.

There’s something so universal about, well, the universe, that it automatically invites profound philosophical questions. So the sequence towards the end of the film where the astronauts share their spiritual experiences, which in any other context would sound inexcusably trite, becomes beautiful and reflective. Of course, no film about the Apollo missions would be considered comprehensive unless it brought up the increasingly popular ‘hoax’ question. By positioning the answers to this over the credits, Sington is clearly stating his views on the subject, but he leaves it up to the men themselves to deal with it, which they do with considerable aplomb. And it’s this style and dignity that is infused throughout the film and which makes it compelling viewing, whether you’re a fan of the space race or not.
Dir. David Sington, USA 2007, 100 mins, cert. U
With: Colonel Buzz Aldrin, Captain Alan Bean, Captain Eugene Cernan, Brigadier General Michael Collins, Brigadier General Charles Duke, Captain James Lovell, Captain Edgar Mitchell, Hon. Harrison Schmitt, Colonel David Scott, Captain John Young

Screening at the Times BFI 51st London Film Festival, 17th October - 1st November 2007

In the Shadow of the Moon is released in cinemas on Friday 2nd November

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