“Apollo 11” goes beyond a child’s dream from thirty years ago
One of the first historical facts that I remembered as a child were the words spoken by Neil Armstrong jumping off the lunar lander — it’s a small step for man, but a great leap for humanity.
It was extremely evocative. I was way too young to watch live coverage of the moon landing and — at the end of the eighties in Poland — there were only two channels of national television, so it was rather difficult to come across snapshots from NASA. There was no internet either, so I relied on kid’s imagination.
Over the years, I consumed every film about space, that I could find. Mostly sci-fi of course. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Alien, finally Apollo 13. Never did I think that one day I would be able to watch the first moon landing almost one-to-one, in a documentary film made on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
Todd Douglas Miller, looking for unpublished shots for his document, has acquired rather extraordinary archival materials from NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). It had beed locked away, untouched for fifty years! 70-mm. large format positives, obtained from 65-mm. negatives using the Todd-AO method.
The technicalities are usually of a minor importance, but are rather crucial in this case. In the 1950s, the United States cinema fought against the popularity of television by flexing its muscles with technological innovations. One of them was a large format positive, 70mm wide. It allowed the recording of a very wide picture and four soundtracks. Let’s leave the sound for a while (I’ll get back to this later).
Dan Rooney, a NARA archivist working with Miller, said during one of the working-talks that there was a certain amount of material from NASA on the large format tape. Miller asked for further information. It turned out that the agency has 165 rolls of 70mm film, of which 61 rolls related to the Apollo 11 mission.
Why did NASA shoot archival materials on a 65-mm. negative, changed in the Todd-AO process to a 70-mm. positive? This was due to a joint project with MGM Studios that unfortunately never did kick off. Despite this, during the documentary shots of the Apollo missions, it was decided to stick to the technology that was used in the implementation of such cinema legends as “The sounds of music”, “Around the World in 80 Days”, “Hello, Dolly!” and “Cleopatra”. Fortunately!
The quality of the 70mm large format positives delighted the creators involved in the project. Add to that modern editing techniques, post-production and color correction and you get an image that will knock your socks off. All this is buttered with the beautiful music of Matt Morton, which perfectly raises the mood (think “Interstellar”, but more classy).
And then there’s the sound. Radio recordings from each of several dozen loops at the Florida Flight Control Center, comms with astronauts in a rocket, comms between the LM lander, lunar orbiter and Earth, conversations on board — roughly ELEVEN THOUSAND OF HOURS OF AUDIO. 458 days! Titanic effort, but it allowed to lead a feature film-like narrative. There are no interviews, no talking heads, there are only a few simple animations describing the subsequent phases of the flight. The whole document is happening here and now, not looking back from the today’s perspective.
The footage taken by the team led by Theo Kamecke are spectacular. Remarkable shots of the Saturn V rocket being rolled on a giant transporter to the Launchpad, phenomenal close-ups of Neil Amstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins wearing space suits — their faces, full of emotions, focused on what they are going to achieve. This is extremely powerful.
Shots showing what was happening outside of NASA buildings are also a great strength of the film. We watch the rocket launch with the spectators onsite. People who came from different states and from abroad to see with their own eyes as the three superheroes are taking off to the moon. Aerial photos show the campers town, followed by close-ups of people in colorful vintage clothes (well, period-adequate really), wearing great hairstyles and fashionable glasses, laden with gadgets like 8 and 16mm movie cameras, telescopes, binoculars, battery operated tourist radios, cameras.
There are caravans, travel chairs, people sleeping in large station wagons, stands with hot dogs and sandwiches, flags. There is a VIP area, NASA officials and presidential officials, a crowd of women in dresses and gentlemen in hats mixes with military uniforms, journalists weighed down by equipment. Few hundreds of shirtless campers crammed into the concrete waterfront parking lot in front of the Pennys store. Grandparents show something to their grandchildren, fathers drink beer while their daughters look through binoculars. For me — a child of Polish martial law — all the damn colorful America of the sixties is there!
And here is the Apollo 11 mission. Seeing the Saturn V rocket standing on jet flames and clearing the tower I was all choked up. I cried with emotion. Such is the power of these images!
Amazing, moving shots from cameras on earth, and then from space. Satisfaction while watching this movie is beyond anything. It is absolutely better than any of my expectations. Better than any CGI in any feature film. Because it is so REAL! Nothing can be compared to that. Nothing in the world.
Emotions when approaching the moon are indescribable. I know they will make it, but when the 1201 and 1202 executive overflow alarms sounds, I’m on the edge of my seat! When Neil switches to manual control, overriding the computer; when the fuel reading is getting lower, and he is still looking for a convenient place to land, I’m on pins and needles. 60 seconds of fuel, 30 seconds, 15 seconds… Delicious sense of relief when they finally landed.
After all, I learned about it as a kid: “on July the 20th 1969, the astronauts of the American mission Apollo 11 landed on the moon surface for the first time” Then, I felt that it was something big. But certainly I had no idea that it was so great! The second time I cry when Amstrong utters his famous words and descends to the surface of the moon. The third I cry time when astronauts return safely to Earth. You may say I’m soft. That may be, but believe me, I got soaked in this movie like in a child’s dream from thirty years ago.
It is a total must-see. Maybe it’s the best movie ever made. Certainly the best in 2019 and the best movie about space in general. Ocasionally there are screenings in cinemas, but you definately can rent it on various streaming platforms. You definately should.
And once you watch it, please visit https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ and see the study that Ben Feist did for the Apollo 11 mission.
