By way of full disclosure, let me confess to being a complete sucker for documentaries on space exploration. Even so, it's hard imagining too many people taking issue with my finding In the Shadow of the Moon to be a compelling and altogether uplifting experience.
A highly personal history of the nine lunar voyages made between 1968 and 1972, In the Shadow of the Moon gathers together the surviving Apollo astronauts (with one conspicuous omission) — the only human beings to ever stand on the surface of another world — and allows them to tell this epic story in their own words. The aging crew members spin tales that inevitably encompass the cosmic, but in ways that are approachable and occasionally even comic (one space jockey lays claim to being the first man to pee on the moon), their refreshingly down-to-earth observations providing an intimate counterpoint to the otherworldly archival footage presented here.
Perhaps the most striking thing about David Sington's film, however, is the very different sort of America it so vividly recalls — a nation that, even at the height of the Vietnam War and cities aflame with racial strife, presented the world with a shining model of what humanity might be. A million miles from the Age of Bush, the America we see on screen is less a country than a state of mind, a place populated by fluid, future-fixated people whose up-up-and-away approach, for one brief, glorious moment in time, had the whole world cheering.
In the Shadow of the Moon stops just short of being a completely satisfying experience — the movie doesn't address key concerns like why we suddenly stopped going to moon, for instance, and first-man-to-set-foot-on-the-moon Neil Armstrong, who refused to be interviewed for this project, becomes a frustrating black hole at the center of the film — but the dream evoked is still a powerful one.
In the Shadow of the Moon (PG) Stars Jim Lovell, Dave Scott, John Young, Gene Cernan, Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Edgar Mitchell, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt. Opens Sept. 28 at local theaters. 3.5 stars
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2007.