Moon Quiver

By JONATHAN RICHARDS

In the Shadow of the Moon, documentary, rated PG,

CCA Cinematheque, 982-1338, 4 chiles

There was a time in living memory when, as a world, we were still capable of being thrilled. In July 1969, people around the globe watched, cheered, and felt united when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge, issued eight years earlier, to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade and bring him safely back to Earth.

As astronaut Jim Lovell recalls in In the Shadow of the Moon, David Sington’s documentary about the Apollo program, the late ’60s was a bad time for America. We were bogged down in an unpopular war in Vietnam, we were still reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedys, and we were protesting against the racism and sexism of our society. Americans needed positive mojo, and Apollo 11 gave it to us.

In the Shadow of the Moon is a riveting window onto the

excitement, the improbability, and the outsize adventure of man’s journeys to the moon. It was a remarkable era and a remarkably brief one. By 1972, we had been to the moon, walked upon its surface, and then left it behind, perhaps forever.

Been to the moon! There are still people who don’t believe it. A 1999 Gallup poll found that 6 percent of Americans think that the landing was a hoax, which understandably riles the astronauts who are interviewed in the film. Alan Bean, the fourth man to set foot on the moon, points out how hard it is for even two or three people to keep a secret and wonders how people can imagine that the entire NASA roster could have kept buttoned up on a whopper like that. Eugene Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 mission, is more succinct: “Truth needs no defense.”

Sington amassed rare and beautiful

footage of the Apollo missions, some

of it never seen before, and he illuminates it with interviews with 10 of the surviving astronauts (the reclusive Neil Armstrong declined to participate) who made the 480,000-mile, round-trip journey to our closest neighbor in space. The audacity, the vision, the technology, the commitment, the luck — as well as the stunning courage and coolness of these men and the scientists who sent them on their way — is astonishing; it fills you with awe.

In many ways this is a story of perspectives. The men who walked on the moon speak in hushed, almost mystical, tones of the view that they alone, of the billions of people born on this planet, have had of Earth.

“A jewel that hangs in the blackness of space,” marvels one, while another muses that he could hold up his thumb

in front of his eye and blot out his home planet. “It really is an oasis,” says Dave Scott, “and we don’t take very good care of it.” Michael Collins reflects that from space, “maybe some of our terrestrial squabbles don’t seem quite so important.”

In the aftermath of their lunar experience, many of the astronauts found themselves searching for ways to explain to themselves the feelings engendered by their unique perspective. Charlie Duke found it in Christianity, Edgar Mitchell in mysticism and global activism, while Cernan looked to “something above the religions that we create for ourselves.”

The passage of the years since the Apollo adventures creates another perspective. Listening to these men, now in their 70s, recalling that high tide of their lives — and watching

their faces, now creased and sometimes haunted as they reflect on going where no one had gone before and perhaps no one ever will again —

creates a dimension that could not have been part of this film had it been made 30 years ago.

Sington does not explore much of the darker side of the story. He does take us back to the heartbreaking fire on the launching pad that claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, the crew of Apollo 1. Collins remembers that Grissom was worried about the electrical wiring in the capsule but didn’t complain because “if I say anything about it, they’ll fire me.” Whatever fears these men had were overwhelmed by their passionate desire to be a part of the adventure.

Nothing here addresses the toll the experience took on so many of their marriages and personal lives, and there is very little about the personality

differences that added a subtext to their experience. Andrew Smith explores this territory in Moondust:

In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, a fascinating book on the astronauts’ lives after their lunar visits. Talking about Buzz Aldrin’s jealousy of Armstrong, Smith quotes from Collins’ 1974 memoir Carrying the Fire: “Fame has not worn well on Buzz. I think he resents not being the first man on the moon more than he appreciates being the second.”

The tenor of In the Shadow of the Moon is inspirational, not investigative.

For young viewers, it will be an eye-opener, for those a little older, a reminder of something that felt like a global accomplishment. The movie fills us with wonder and pride and a tugging sense of loss. <

(c) 2007 The Santa Fe New Mexican. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.