🎬 #135 The Call Of Space.
Apologies, just one recommendation this week. But it’s big, in every sense of the word. I’m in an area right now that has really clear views of the night sky - which is so good, it’s surprising to see. Even catching little glimpses of more stars in the blackness of space helps put everything into perspective, as cliché as that is. Taking just 10 seconds to look up at them is grounding, like putting your bare feet in grass. This week’s film takes us behind the scenes of our first time setting foot on another celestial body. It’s an amazing feat. Made even more amazing by the fact that NASA wasn’t even established until 1958, a mere 11 years earlier. And created 9 months after Sputnik 1 was launched successfully by the Russians. This documentary somehow makes that epoch defining moment feel even grander.
Happy viewing
Bry
APOLLO 11
2019 Dir Todd Douglas Miller
1 hr 33 mins
I love the quality of the 65mm and 16mm Eastman film stock, and the aesthetics of the late 60’s space technology. It feels like a match made in heaven. The pinkish, purple highlights on the whites, the softness but rawness - it puts us into this very tactile space. There’s a lot of texture in the frame, which makes the skin feel more engrained with time, the calculating eyes more intense - the tension more palpable. And the engineering more ‘engineery.’ When the engines on the Saturn V fire - you can almost smell the exhaust plumes. It’s cool, for lack of a better word.
The film gives us a view into the practicalities of getting to the Moon and gives us some sense of the men selected for the mission. I feel it’s best experienced as a document of awe. The billions of moving parts that had to be prepped, both mechanical, physical and mental. The redundancies, the trajectory analysis, all the systems that had to work together is just stunning to behold. But all of it centres around the human element, the biggest edge of the seat moment is the very human, final descent to the surface. Brace yourself for that. It’s also, for me at least, an emotional experience seeing the human race reach out for something so bold, just at the edges of possibility.
TL;DR: Miller’s document of our last bold attempt to go further than we ever imagined is thrilling and inspiring.
*Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and the UK.
Fact: The film includes footage shot by all three Apollo 11 astronauts - Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, so all of them are honorary members of the American Society of Cinematographers.