In the Shadow of the Moon (2007) (SIFF) - A

"In the Shadow of the Moon" is a British documentary about the Apollo missions. It takes a simple, but unique approach to the moon missions. There are only twelve men who have ever walked on a heavenly object other than Earth. Three of those men, Pete Conrad, James Irwin, and Alan Shepard, have passed away. The original goal of "In the Shadow of the Moon" was to interview all nine of the other lunar walkers, but in the end Neil Armstrong declined to participate, as he has in almost all public events since finishing his career as an astronaut. In addition, Jim Lovell who commanded the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission was also interviewed.

The movie really emphasizes the words of the astronauts. There are some scenes with on-screen captions, and archival footage of newscasts from the time, but other than that all the words spoken in the documentary are spoken by the Apollo astronauts. Hearing the astronauts recollections about their missions was wonderful, and it was fascinating to listen to the them reflect on how leaving the Earth affected their world views. Almost unanimously they expressed the view that seeing the Earth from that vantage point made them realize how petty the struggles of nations and tribes were in the grand scheme of things.

The other absolutely stunning feature of the film is a whole bunch of rarely- or never-seen footage from NASA's archives. Much of the footage had been in storage in liquid nitrogen for thirty years. Even though I'm a huge moon-buff and I've seen tons of documentaries and movies featuring footage from the moon missions, much of the footage from the film was new to me.

One scene in the footage that really amused me was video of the struggles of the Apollo 11 crew to successfully plant the American flag in the moon for the famous photograph. The scene is doubly amusing because that famous flag photograph is one of the oft-cited pieces of evidence from conspiracy nuts that the moon landings were faked. In the famous photo, the flag does not hang down, but stands out as if blown by the wind, and even has ripples in it, further making it appear that it is wind blown. Of course, there is no wind on the moon so conspiracy nuts have claimed that this photograph could not have been shot on the moon. NASA's official explanation is that to make a good photograph, a rod was used to extend the flag horizontally, and that vibrations from planting the flag in the moon's surface created the bends in the flag. While I'm sure die-hard conspiracy theorists can come up with an explanation of how the footage from "In the Shadow of the Moon" was faked, it pretty much corroborates NASA's official explanation. The behavior of the flag while Aldrin and Armstrong struggle to plant it does not look at all like a flag blowing in the wind, and in fact looks exactly like NASA's explanation.

If you have even the slightest bit of interest in the subject of this documentary, definitely see it. I promise you'll find it both uplifting and inspirational.

Final Grade: A