Review: Apollo 11 (2019)

Apollo 11 (2019)

That's it - I'm officially on board with the ol' theory that Stanley Kubrick masterminded the Apollo 11 landing footage 'witnessed' by the world in 1969. The new footage seen in this documentary, the cinematic majesty of it (quite reminiscent of 2001...), the suspense of it, the pacing of it, it all seems to perfectly align with Kubrick's style. It's just too fitting...

Anyways!... back to the real business - the new Apollo 11 documentary is quite simply incredible, and one that should be seen by any space lover, film lover or, really, anyone who wants to witness one of humankind's greatest achievements in fantastic cinematic fashion. The documentary breaks the mold of most documentaries and lacks the usual narrative structure. In Apollo there are no interviews, nor is there a narrator, other than the real life NASA workers speaking and announcing critical information to other NASA individuals about the status of the spacecraft and its three famous astronauts.

For anyone who has been living under a rock for the past fifty years, Apollo 11 was the US spaceship, manned by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Much of the documentary is a showcase of never-before-seen NASA footage from the date of Apollo 11's launch on July 16 all the way to its return back home on July 24. The film works as a nice complement to last year's much more personal First Man. It is a testament to the teams that did the filming (which also includes Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins who had to man the cameras once in space and are credited as cinematographers in the doc), that the footage captured all those years ago was done so in true cinematic fashion (just wait till you see some of the widescreen shots on a big screen...). We all know how the story goes, and that the mission was a success in every way possible, however, seeing this authentic footage for the first time is an utterly tense and rewarding experience. As director, Todd Douglas Miller, states in an interview, "the footage speaks for itself".

For much of the documentary, the audience is in the main control rooms of NASA jumping between the various teams responsible for each phase of the mission, as well, we also see crowds of thousands of people in Florida who camped out for hours upon hours waiting to see the launch (apparently LBJ, Isaac Asimov and Johnny Carson can all be spotted at different points). Once the ship is in orbit, footage begins cutting to cameras manned inside the ship as well as ones docked on the outside, often with critical information such as velocity, fuel levels, and distance to planet all displayed to keep the audience, like NASA, appraised of the status of the mission objectives.

More than anything, Apollo 11 is a celebration of one of humankind's greatest achievements - the coming together of some of the world's greatest (and bravest) minds in order to achieve something that humans, through all of history, would never have fathomed as being possible. Every child dreams of being an astronaut and of landing on the moon, and this documentary takes you to that very moment in history when our planet came together in order to manage that feat for the very first time. It is a wonder to behold.