Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

Today is the 55th Anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11—the NASA space mission that did, indeed, land the first Earth-people on another world.

A Lie's Still a Lie If Everybody Believes It

or  

"Actually...Leave Them Up. Let Them Think About What They Did."

 

Fly Me to the Moon—which was saved from going straight to streaming by audience surveys—already has a couple strikes against it for me before I even see the movie.

 

1) It's a rom-com, a genre that leaves me cold for its predictability and formulaic structure: Meet Cute; Get Involved; Get Closer; Complications and Misunderstandings; Split Up and Simmer; Coming to Terms—Sacrifice; Ride Off into the Sunset. Two-step drama, with a mere distraction in the middle.

 

2) It floats that old chestnut of conspiracy theorists—the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 was faked. I hate that crap. I wasted too many hours online debunking them that I just gave up with some useful links to YouTube people using "facts" and not "feelings" against the absurdist arguments thrown up by others. The best reply is Buzz Aldrin's; he punched one of these nuts in the nose.* I won't waste time on it here, but a lot of the explanation for the origins of this vacuousness (and arguments against) are displayed here and here.  

 

Of course, this isn't the way things should be; one should go into a movie without prejudice, without expectations. I couldn't do that. Bear that in mind.

For the most part, Fly Me To the Moon gets its facts right ("with a lie or two"): there's the standard run-down of what set "The Space Race" up—Russia's Sputnik launch in 1957, America's fears leading to its fast ramp-up and militarization of a space program, and just as we were getting to the stage of moving out of Earth-orbit flights, there was a horrific fire on the launch-pad of Apollo 1 during a test exercise killing the astronauts and causing a significant pause to "get it right." A revamped Apollo capsule was tested, re-tested, and fire-proofed and missions were done to test it, the lunar landing craft (or LEM) and a sortee made around the Moon on Apollo 8. There was a lot of prep, a lot of testing, with the Apollo 1 fire reminding everyone that the mission was "to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth."

That's top of mind to Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), flight director at Kennedy Space Center—the place where they assembled the rocket and launched it—Fly Me to the Moon bases the fictional character on Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury astronauts, who was not allowed to fly because of an atrial fibrillation—"an a-fib" they call it in the movie—a heart murmur. Slayton did not become "Flight Director of Kennedy Space Center" but managed "The Astronaut Office" until he flew on the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission. He is "gung-ho" on the Mission as he was present at the time of the Apollo fire and he takes everything, every nut, bolt, and screw, seriously. And semi-seriously as he's superstitious of the feral black cat that hangs around KSC.

Then there's Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), of "Kelly Jones Advertising." Her job has less to do with reality than it is does with "feelings" and the manipulation of same to win clients and thus, their customers. Like Cole, she's a problem solver, but with a different bent. Her area of expertise isn't science or engineering but psychology—Cole doesn't like weak spots; Kelly loves them. She'll use them to her advantage and if it's a little dishonest, the ends always justify the means. That's how it works in advertising and she sails through her territory friction-less and A-OK.

But, when she's approached by a Man in Black (Woody Harrelson) from the Nixon Administration to "sell" the Moon landing to the American public, she can't resist—it's a government job! And she begins setting up interviews for the press (against NASA regulations but she hires actors to get around that little detail), selling space ad campaigns to willing clients (NASA didn't "do" ad campaigns, but a lot of their contractors were all too willing to crow about it), and doing a little influence-peddling with congressmen voting on funding bills (which certainly happened and is happening today).

For Cole, this is like sticking corporate logos on a capsule to make it look like a NASCAR. It's disrespectful, unnecessary to the program and...just dishonest. It's only when Harrelson's MIB starts interfering that things start turning into a major head-ache—putting cameras on the spacecraft (the idea! Even though*cough* it'd really been happening since Apollo 7). In space you can't change course, but the winds of politics keep threatening to blow things off course.

"You got your notebook?"

But, it's a ROM-COM, and they never stray off track! Cole and Kelly have their differences, so, of course, they have to bend a little and if that's in each other's direction....well...

How is it? Well, as I said on the recent Lambcast about it, it "didn't piss me off" (which, considering I had two strikes against it before entering the theater says a lot about the charm of the thing). Johansson and Tatum could orbit around this sort of material in their sleep, but she never misses an opportunity to display a worry-line and he makes stubborn male obstinancy attractive. Some of the writing is quite clever, the meticulousness of the art direction and the costuming is spot-on (especially for the casual-wear of the males) and Greg Berlanti has a much better eye directing movies than he does producing superhero shows for the CW.

"uhhh...how are they going to stand this thing up?"

(My plastic models of it broke apart in this configuration!!)

But, for criminy sake, one can't look at the movie and think that even the most gullible of audiences won't "buy" some of the stuff they see being shown on-screen. I'd mention some buy they'd be "spoilery" and that's one conspiracy I just won't stand for (some things should be left secret, dammit!).

Let's just say that they got a lot of stuff wrong while maintaining just a bit of the right stuff.

It's a rom-com, so OF COURSE there's going to be a "flying scene!"

* The second best argument is the one for folks who know nothing about the space program (which I grew up watching): Okay...say you fake Apollo 11. Did they also fake Apollo's 12, 14, 15, 16, 17...all of which were larger in scope and covered terrains that couldn't be housed in the BIGGEST warehouse-studios...not to mention Apollo 10 (the dress rehearsal that got tantalizingly close—10 miles—to the lunar service)...and fake Apollo 13, which was a mission FAILURE! 

 

If you seriously believe there was still a conspiracy you're either obstinate in the light of facts, desperate, or certifiable. You need help. Get it. Start with research. 

 

 

The Irishman (I Heard You Paint Houses) (2019)

A Tragic Loyalty
or
Tales From the Last Man Standing ("It's What It Is...")

“Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.”

Bruce Springsteen

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well-made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Martin Scorsese, Empire Magazine interview

Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola say (in their own ways) that Super-hero movies are not cinema and they are right to a certain extent, at least in how it creates a studio myopia on what gets made and what doesn't. Because unless the movie has people with emblems on their chest (and are seriously marketable as action figures), they're consigned to streaming services like Netflix, which, if you think about it, is one step up from premiering on the SYFY channel (which is one step up from direct-to-video..if such a thing still exists).

Nerd's eye opinion of Martin Scorsese.

We could go on about how tent-pole films dominate theater-schedules (when theaters have schedules again once we're past our pandemic focus) and even major film-makers are having trouble attracting studio interest, but that would just be kvetching ("All you kids get out of my theater!"). But, Scorsese did manage to get Netflix to buy into The Irishman, his long-in-the-works adaptation of Charles Brandt's book "I Heard You Paint Houses" when Robert De Niro first proposed it after its publication in 2004, and Scorsese's been working on it since 2007.

Better late than never. And without a Miramax (and Harvey Weinstein) breathing down his neck, one can see what a late-Scorsese film without studio badgering looks like. What we get is a 3 hour film told in nested-flashback of Sheeran's (one must say disputed) reminiscinces of his war experience, brief work as a trucker, and his being enfolded into the world of the Mafia and Teamsters politics as a hit-man and then as body-man for Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa (played by Al Pacino).

That "nested flashback" structure is interesting, as it's a bit more complex than, say, Once Upon a Time in America, where Sergio Leone has an elderly De Niro return to New York to investigate a past mystery, or Arthur Penn's Little Big Man where Dustin Hoffman's Jack Crabbe narrates his own fanciful take on History. Here, Sheeran resides in a nursing home and relates his history ("It's what is is..."), flashing back and forth between a fateful trip to the wedding of the daughter of lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano) in 1975, and the events that led up to that road trip.

It takes a bit of patience and a reliance on our memory of how people look—which is very risky as so much of that is dependent on CGI de-aging technology, particularly of De Niro, Pacino and Joe Pesci—who came out of retirement for this role (and who gives the best and most subtle performance of his career).*

That road-trip is given the most detail and the most dialing-down of information because of its implications in how it affects the rest of the world and in Sheeran's moral decline.

Sheeran briefly looks to us when backed into a corner on the road-trip ("It is what is is")

De Niro's Sheeran is a perpetual foot-soldier, following orders with the same mind-set instilled in him during WWII—you're given a job, you follow orders and you don't question them, but merely carry them out. Yes, he considers the consequences, but there is a moral disconnect of responsibility, whether in war-time, or in civilian duties, to the point where the escalating consequences only produce a larger amount of hesitation before accepting the job." "In for a penny, In for a pound." He carries out his role without a second thought, other than the means to the various ends. 

Sheeran understands his role. He also understands the consequences of not carrying it out, which is always done quickly, coldly and efficiently—the body disposed of (or not) and the weapons used, just one of a growing number tossed into the river. He understands the consequences very well; one of the neat touches that Scorsese tosses in, whenever a new character is introduced, is a short title identifying the person and the date and the means by which they died. You just met them and you already see their death sentence. The rule is: don't get attached. Relationships are short and fragile in that sphere of influence. 

And it is one of influence. The Irishman is one of Scorsese's quietest, more subdued pictures—there's not a lot of fancy camera moves, merely an angular movement done at a steady pace. And there are no acting fire-works...except from Pacino—who seems to have taken on the Pesci "wild card" role in this one—or some of the more volatile actors in the game. But, there is such—I hate to use the term "civility" among mobsters—but shrewd, measured calmness, that when someone does get volatile—or a little out of whack—they're going to get "whacked." It may just be a matter of time.

The Irishman is so measured that you take note of the silences and there are many, especially on the part of De Niro's Sheeran, as he digests what is expected of him, sometimes that takes a little understanding and realization. These aren't mobsters, who come right out and Cagney-like, say "I'm gonna kill ya"—that would be too obvious, especially in a world of wire-tape and undercover cops, and especially as so many are done is social gatherings. The words, when they come, are calm and proceeded by justification, an understanding and presentation of larger issues, arguments that make it difficult to say "no" (except by personal choice and then it's "on you") and that just seems impossible in Sheeran's case.

The final fate of Jimmy Hoffa

Nobody comes out and talks murder or assassination—too obvious and too traceable. The title of Brandt's book, based on Sheeran, "I Heard You Paint Houses"—which is also revealed by a separate title card as a continuation of the title of the film—refers to one's reputation as a killer or hit-man, as "painting houses" refers to blood spray-patterns. That abstract circumlocution is the manner in which things are conveyed—words best left unsaid, but woe if they are not done.

It's all done, so that there is no price to pay. But, there is. Being a Scorsese film, The Irishman does have a conscience, a cost, and for Sheeran, it is placed in his daughter Peggy (played first by Lucy Gallina as a child, and then by Anna Paquin), who early on, when she is pushed by a grocer, Dad goes over and throws the guy through his own glass door. When, Ed becomes involved with Russell Bufalino (Pesci), the older man tries to ingratiate himself—constantly—with the little girl, but she almost has an aversion to him, reverting to a stony silence at the presentation of a present. She does, however, appreciate Hoffa for his efforts to help "the common guy" in his Union, and when Hoffa disappears without a trace, she gets only evasions from her Teamster-father, which estrange him from her forever.

Scorsese has a daughter—she's the one who challenged her Dad to "make a movie people like" (which resulted in Hugo, which set no box office records, but it's certainly likable)—so, it's no surprise that she would be the cost for his lack of character, for his survival in a world of ultimate costs and truncated lives. It's ironic—what would a Scorsese film be without irony?—that his survival to old-age in a world of short-life expectancy should be lived along and apart and shuttered away from his family. That's the cost for long-life.

The Irishman is getting the best reviews of Scorsese's considerable career, and one can guess why: access. On wide-release, you get one or two chances to see and then the judgment gavel comes down. But Scorsese is subtle, even in excess. And having The Irishman immediately available for repeated consumption, one can see the touches, the intricacies in this, one of his most subtle films.

* An aside on this de-aging thing, especially in regarding The Irishman. Sure, you can erase wrinkles from a man's face, sharpen his nose, shave the jowls, and the loose skin. But you can not put bounce in a step, spryness in a gait, or unhunch the shoulders and the careful, gingerly pace of a 76 year old actor. That's the big betrayal of time. The only way you could conquer that is to replace the actor with a younger man...in which case, you wouldn't have De Niro. The made the best choice by compromising with time...as we all do.