In the Shadow of the Moon

Director: David Sington
(2007)

This critically acclaimed, British-made film does a great job recounting the inspired Apollo missions in en engaging way. The spirit of the film is captured by three sentences that appear on screen within the first five minutes of the film:

Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft voyaged to the moon. The men on board are the only human beings to have visited another world. In their words, this is the story of the men who went to the Moon.

This is the stuff of science fiction...

The three crew members of Apollo 8 were
the first humans to witness the "Earthrise"

Astronaut Charlie Duke offered some of my favorite lines in the film: "I found out from the flight surgeon later on that my heartbeat was 144 at liftoff. John (Young)'s was 70." He later pointed out that during reentry into the earth's atmosphere, his spaceship was moving at 39,000 feet per second, which translates to over 26,000 miles an hour (faster than a rifle bullet).

The film was successful in putting the Apollo missions in a cultural framework. Seeing the inspiring speech by President Kennedy, hearing the velvety voice of Walter Cronkite, and getting into the mindset of the illustrious decade really made me wish that I had experienced these events as they occured in the 1960s, and I would imagine anyone who was lucky enough to live through the decade would appreciate the nostalgia. It also made me wonder why no human has been back to the moon (let alone Mars, or beyond...) since 1972.



official film site

Trivial Tidbits:

• The only footprints on the surface of the moon were made by 12 American men
• Buzz "prima donna" Aldrin was the only astronaut in the film who demanded to be paid