Lives In the Shadow of the Moon

"I wana promise you I am human,
I'd pinch myself to find out if it was really happening;
I walked on the Moon for three days of my life;
And now I am here to tell you about it - that's science fiction."
--Eugene Cernan, Apollo 10 & 17.

In the Shadow of the Moon (Australian release DVD packaging shown left) is a documentary about the men who went to the moon between 1968 and 1972. The film was shown in a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada in late 2007 and also had a limited release in Australia in 2008.

The film is a series of interviews with ten of the twenty-four Apollo program astronauts, the notable exception is Neil Armstrong, interspersed with archival footage. The only speaking roles in the documentary are the astronauts themselves, although Neil Armstrong does appear in archival footage. The interviews are intimate; the astronauts speak directly to the camera. The power of this documentary is that I felt they were speaking to me alone.

The majority of the archival footage I have never seen and I found it spectacular, however, when describing scenes from the film to a friend he mentioned seeing some of the material before. The closest I've come before to that sense of awe is the photographs of Apollo presented in Michael Light's book Full Moon (published in 1999).

The film's title is a metaphor for the astronaut's lives defined by the shadow of their involvement and achievements in Apollo. The men, now in their seventies, reflect on what Apollo was to them at the time and what is to them now. For the first time I had a sense of these men as human beings rather than remote, larger than life figures. In the interviews one sees hints of the behind the scenes drama, and of the personal cost of Apollo to the men and their families.

This film makes the experiences of the astronauts accessible to us and in their own words. What made it different for me was the focus on the men, as they were then and as they are now, rather than a cavalcade of hardware being shot into space. But there is enough hardware shown to keep ardent technocrats happy. The film engaged me (code for I loved it) and I recommend it to anyone.

Australian release: Madman Entertainment (MMA 2791), 2 DVDs, $AUD 39.95. Contents: Disc 1: In the Shadow of the Moon; Disc 2: Behind the shadow (additional interview material); scoring Apollo (the music); interview with David Sington (director); original theatrical trailer.