Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Archival material from the original NASA film footage – much of it seen for the first time – plus interviews with the surviving astronauts, including Jim Lovell, Dave Scott, John Young, Gene Cernan, Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Edgar Mitchell, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt.
This acclaimed documentary draws on rare and newly restored NASA archival footage to chronicle the Apollo program through the eyes of the surviving astronauts. Its greatest strength is its cinematography and archival visuals — the original 16mm and 70mm NASA footage, much of it previously unseen, is breathtaking and earns a well-above-average mark. The plot (structured narrative of the Apollo missions) is solid but follows a fairly conventional chronological documentary form. The astronaut interviews are candid and moving but the 'acting' dimension is simply naturalistic testimony rather than performance. Novelty is above average — access to this level of archival material and the gathering of so many surviving astronauts is distinctive — but the documentary format itself is familiar. The ending, with the astronauts reflecting on the profound impact of seeing Earth from space, is genuinely moving but not entirely unexpected for this genre.