Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Moon
Men
(In the Shadow of the Moon, 10/15/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro
According
to a recent AP wire story, the chief administrator of NASA now concedes
that China, not America, will next put its bootprints on the Moon. Not
to take anything away from the Chinese and their valiant "taikonauts,"
but this prediction bears repeating: sometime before the fiftieth anniversary
of America's "giant leap for mankind," we will lose our preeminence
in space. What could testify more clearly to a legacy of visionless
political leadership than squandering a half-century lead?
Of course, there are critics who
will retort that America has other priorities to attend to. What is
lost, they ask, by letting somebody else be first for a while? David
Sington's new documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, is one
eloquent answer to that question. What is lost, it suggests, is the
positive ambition that burns behind the eyes of Sington's subjects:
the men who walked on the Moon during the six successful Apollo missions,
and who will soon begin to die off, taking their unique memories with
them. They are examples of the kind of self-confidence that makes it
possible to solve all the other, less glamorous problems.
There have been plenty of other
documentaries about the moon shots, such as Al Reinart's feature-length
For All Mankind (1989). What makes Shadow different is
the way it gets into the faces of the fortunate few who have visited
another world. Those who were formerly anonymous, either behind helmet
visors or masks of professional competence, have been softened and particularized
by age. What we find in them, surprisingly, is incredulity—though
they were first-hand participants, the astronauts can't seem to believe
the manner in which fate has made them unique among all their brothers
and sisters on the planet. Some, such as Alan Bean (Apollo 12) and Michael
Collins (Apollo 11) are perhaps the most appealing, recounting their
stories with an avuncular, offhand charm. Unlike most uncles, however,
Bean can plausibly report that after returning from a dead world, "I
never complain about the weather [on Earth] anymore. I'm just glad there
is weather."
There are other interesting relevations,
such as one astronaut who experienced a spiritual epiphany while on
the return trip to Earth. The film's title is inspired by the little-known
fact (well, little-known to me) that the astronauts didn't actually
see the Moon until they were in orbit around it. Instead of the usual
science fiction image of an alien globe growing bigger and bigger in
the porthole, their first direct experience of their destination was
an eerie fall into darkness. The reclusive Neil Armstrong is conspicuously
missing here, but we do hear about someone even more unique than the
man who took the first steps on the Moon—the first human being
to urinate while standing on another heavenly body. Trivial? Perhaps,
but the performance of such bodily functions somehow makes the Moon
a real place, not just a stage for angels or heroes.
Visually, there's not much new here.
We see the same archival footage we've been seeing all our lives—the
Saturn rocket stages separating in space, the rover kicking up moondust,
the lunar touchdown in grainy gray smudges. Some of the network material
is interesting, though. CBS appears to have ripped off the opening images
of 2001: A Space Odyssey for their moon coverage graphics. Walter
Cronkite's giddiness at the good news from Tranquility Base makes a
gratifying counterpoint to his ashen reporting of President Kennedy's
death earlier in the decade. It's also amusing that mankind's first
extraterrestrial landfall was "brought to you by Kelloggs."
The next generation of US manned
spacecraft, Orion, will resurrect the old Apollo model. Like Hollywood,
NASA now appears infatuated with the "origin story"—a
rejuvenation of the future by returning to the original glory days.
Time will tell whether the hardware works as hoped. If Orion also means
we see more individuals like Collins and Bean in the news, it will be
a success no matter where it travels.
©2007 Nicholas Nicastro
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