Apollo 11 (2019)

One for the Nerds
or
"It's a View Worth the Price of the Trip"

Apollo 11 (The Imax Experience) is a new film by Todd Douglas Miller using old film by NASA that has sat in vaults for years and years and years gathering Earth-dust, with no eyes to peer upon them and wonder. Why? Budget cuts—it takes man-hours to review the reams of data and artifacts of the Moon Landings and NASA—at the time—was busy with other things like 1) trying to land men on the Moon and 2) trying to legitimize its budget and very existence once having done so.

What sets this documentary apart from the many that will be seen this week is its source material—for much of it, particularly the launch of the initial Saturn 5 booster rocket to send the crew on the first leg of its mission and its recovery 8 days later, was shot using 70mm film, which—when you see it in IMAX (which is how I saw it)—is startlingly clear and defined. One wonders at the power of the Saturn 5 engines vibrating out of focus at the launch, so close you can practically see rivets, or the sense of how hot it was in the viewing stands, every trail of sweat and every pore on the faces of the viewers.

One would think one had seen it all, but Miller (working for CNN Films) takes a different approach—excising all narration, any commentary, footage of talking heads, or witness verification, even (that staple of CNN documentaries) "expert impressions"—to tell the complete story with raw film and audio (enhanced, as always, for dramatic purposes) taken as it happened. One might think this was a simple process, but consider this—nobody had bothered syncing the 32 channels of audio (11,000 hours worth) recorded over the radios in Houston Control with the footage they had shot. Just the thought of that process makes this old recording engineer break out in more of a sweat than if I'd been sitting in the Florida stands that hot July day of the launch.

Certainly, there may be things folks might not want to see—there are one too many shots of Johnny Carson in the stands for me—and Miller does make the footage tell a comprehensive story, especially in the films opening minutes when he has the most material. Once the film settles into the mission itself, footage becomes more scarce and he does a fine job of stretching out the trip without feeling like you're watching reel-ends and discarded footage. Anything that you need to know not provided by the live audio is produced with some nifty graphics with no one having to point out that it was a historic mission or that "this was a critical moment for the crew." It assumes our intelligence—human beings DID go to the Moon, after all—and doesn't waste time with the obvious.

The men—and one woman—of Kennedy Launch Control.

This certainly pays off in certain sequences: the actual landing footage, which we've probably seen more than enough times (but cleaned up to 8k resolution which makes a huge difference), from a single movie camera stuck in a corner of the Lunar Module's triangular windows at an odd angle, properly synced to the audio (this time), while graphics read out speed, altitude, and more importantly—fuel. It would be inaccurate to say that the LM was running on fumes when it landed, but it had certainly gone past the point of safety—your car's gas reminder indicator would have gone off quite awhile before...but Armstrong couldn't look for the nearest gas station. He had to commit...or quit. It's nerve-wracking...especially when you see the moment between alarms, warnings about fuel, that Armstrong sees that they're heading for a dangerous crater, takes over manually and jams the Lunar Module forward to avoid it...while he's running out of fuel.

Another nifty touch...I found it nifty, others might see it as a snooze—the sequences where Apollo 11 fires its engines behind the Moon to fall into its gravity well, and the critical moment when they have to fire it again to get out of orbit and return to Earth. Miller just lets the film run while putting up a graphics display showing speed, length of firing of the engine...read-outs...you watch the speed indicator drop (or speed up) while watching the actual results of it on the film. It feels like you're in the driver's seat and there's a palpable sense of "being there" watching the Moon slow down as the speed drops—and jolt forward when it starts up again. That was a fun little ride.

And Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins? The guys who had to pull it off and had been scrutinized, examined, thrown in the glare of a spotlight never anticipated, and, uniquely were isolated before and after the Mission? They're laconic. Collins was the jokester among the crew and even his humor was martini-dry. But, in the suiting up for the launch, you can see it in Armstrong's eyes. The pressure. He looks like he's barely gotten any sleep the night before. And after the prescribed steak-and-eggs breakfast (which feels a bit like a last meal), he puts on all the gear—they all do, and there's a tentativeness to their expressions. Armstrong was a reticent guy, not much of a smiler, but the determination and antsiness on his face are palpable. He may put on a "public grin" for the cameras walking to his transport, but there is no joy in it, and, indeed, there won't be a smile visible until Aldrin snaps one of the few shots of him during the Mission—all the Moon walk shots are of Aldrin, except two (and in one of them, he's reflected in Aldrin's face-mask)—after they're back inside the Lunar Module. 

And it's a smile of relief. They'd done it. All the potential disasters that Armstrong had deliberately worked against in the simulators back in Houston—resulting in many crashes (to Aldrin's chagrin)—did not happen. Well, they happened. But, Armstrong had a support system back in Mission Control that could radio back in seconds that his targeting computer was getting over-loaded from three sources of information...and tell him to ignore it...keep flying. Stick the landing. That's your job. Everything else is nothing.

It's probably why Armstrong comes back effusive in his praise of the technicians. They had his back 240,000 miles...and a one 1/4-second delay away. Yeah, it may seem like a three man job...but only because hundreds of people were checking all the things the crew didn't have the bandwidth...or time...to learn about the millions of details that went into landing on the Moon.

And we're still learning about them some 50 years later.

Armstrong can smile after his day on the Moon...finally.