A One Mann’s Movies review of “Apollo 11” (2019).
Bob the Movie Man’s Rating:
Certification:
UK: U; US: G.
My movie choices in the last couple of weeks have gravitated inexorably around the decade of my birth. Last time – like Sam Beckett – it was a leap back to the early 60’s music with “Yesterday“; here it was a (giant) leap to the very end of the 60′ s and an extraordinary documentary by Todd Douglas Miller.
The “plot”.
It’s the Apollo 11 mission. That’s it. No annoying voiceover from Clooney or Gosling spouting truisms (provided you ignore Walter Kronkite’s occasional excellent and sonorous TV commentary). Just extraordinary footage from July 1969 of the 8 day mission and the days immediately preceeding (and in the end titles, following) that historic event.
Astonishingly powerful shots of the Apollo 11 launch. I’ve been fortunate to have seen two Florida shuttle launches live (the “crackle” of the engines is amazing!) but they must have paled into insignificance compared to the Saturn V. (Source: Dogwoof Pictures).
It’s almost unbelievable.
1977’s “Capricorn One” famously (and brilliantly) postulated that a fictional Mars landing was all done on a film set to “save face” after a fatal system failure was detected just prior to launch. And it’s easy to see where the concept comes from. There is something truly awe-inspiring about the potential number of things that could have gone wrong, but fortunately didn’t.
It’s crazy….. as it’s historical, you KNOW exactly what actually happened. And yet every rocket burn has you on the edge of your seat. The landing itself is “clench the chair-arms” tense: you will never complain again about your low-fuel warning light coming on in your car!
It’s not even as if they had the technology to succeed. One of the great things about Damien Chazelle’s recent biopic of Neil Armstrong, “First Man“, was that the camera lingered on the rivet-ty glory of the Apollo command modules. And there’s something uniquely coffin-like about the hatch closing on the three brave men as they lock themselves to the top of a bloody great bomb.
Computing wise, the Apollo 11 craft had a computer with 1.024 MHz and 2K of memory; today an Apple S4 Watch has 64-bit dual cores of (presumably) 0.512MHz each (delivering infinitely more computing power) and 1600000KB of memory!
Very brave men. Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Heroes all. (Source: Dogwoof Pictures).
Avoids Mansplaining… but sometimes doesn’t explain enough.
The movie is good in not going back to basics for the audience in the art of space travel, but this might be confusing for the young and uninitiated. (“OH MY GOD!… the rocket’s split apart”! “Er, no, it’s supposed to do that… it’s called stage-separation”). Fortunately, there are some useful little graphical animations added to provide some clue about what you’re about to see (for those who didn’t have the Airfix Saturn V model and do them repeatedly in your bedroom as a child).
In some cases though there was frustratingly not enough detail provided. Some of the dialogue in the communications with Mission Control I desperately wanted to understand, but just couldn’t hear clearly enough. Subtitles though would have ruined the visuals, so I don’t think you can win there.
In another crucial scene (the “seat-arm clenching” bit), a “1202 error” flashes in the corner of your screen….WHAT IS THAT, AND IS IT IMPORTANT you scream? Answer there came none. (It’s actually a computer overflow alarm, due to the basic nature of the computing capability onboard and the amount of data coming into it during the landing. There’s a very technical explanation here if you are interested).
Superb camera trickery not to get Kubrick and the crew featured in the reflection. (After a joke by Stephen Sambrook esquire). (Source: Dogwoof Pictures).
“But WHY OH WHY the modern electronic soundtrack”?
An aspect of the film I liked a great deal was the music score by Matt Morton. But it did niggle a bit that the electronic nature of the music seemed way too modern for the time period depicted. As if deliberately sticking it to anyone so complaining, I did notice in the end titles a statement in small font that said that all of the music was created on musical instruments available in 1969. (So there! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Mann!)
Neil Armstrong comes across as far more “human” in the documentary than as painted by Ryan Gosling in “First Man”. (Source: Dogwoof Pictures).
Final Thoughts.
This is a film that deserves to be seen at the cinema, and on as big a screen as you can manage to find. It only seems to have a limited UK release (I saw it at our local Picturehouse cinema), but it is really worth going out of your way to catch if you can. A film that properly provides you with a view of our blue oasis of a world from afar: and critically what we might be doing to it.
I also thought it should make humanity feel rather ashamed of itself: if man took those great leaps in the 10 years after JFK’s famous speech, what has really been achieved in manned space travel in the 50 years since? On Earth’s report card it should say “C- …. could do better”.
Trailer:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc.
Well done Dr Bob! I loved this movie, probably because I got to watch it at the IMAX at the Kennedy Space Center on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch and had just done the full tour. Great movie, just amazing what they did with the available technology of the 1960s – but then Austin Powers also travelled through time so they had their physics in high gear in the movies.
Hope you are well, enjoy the reviews!
Ha ha – thanks Steve. LOL re the Austin Powers comment. He was deffo more groovy that Neil Armstrong. Interestingly I was thinking of Armstrong during “Ad Astra” the other night…. another film about a rather socially constipated astronaut!