In The Shadow Of The Moon

I have never been able to come to terms with the supposed Moon landings achieved by the Americans between 1968 and 1972. Yes, blasting a can into space that fell back into some ocean I can accept but a rocket that hovers 60 miles above the surface of the Moon while a small module detaches itself from the mothership, lands, its 2 occupants cavorting around for a while then taking off, reconnecting and turning around and heading back to Earth?  Like, yeah?!!. Yet In The Shadow Of The Moon we have some of the men, notably Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins of Apollo 11 without Neil Armstrong from the same mission, the man who is credited as “the first man on the moon”, talking about their experiences with apparently well-founded sincerity. Presumably they were not brain-washed by NASA, nor are they lying stooges, nor has anyone in the past 40 years come forward and revealed that they were part of a gigantic hoax intended to stare down the Ruskis at a time when the American Establishment was coming apart at the seams.  

David Sington’s  documentary is largely made up of the astronauts talking about their experiences, their recollections being matched to archival footage. Although by no means comprehensive it is the latter I find particularly problematic and more reminiscent of Georges Méliès 1902 sci-fi fantasy film, A Trip To The Moon than factual reportage.

To take a few examples:

1. After we see from the module Armstrong & Aldrin raising the Stars and Stripes the POV cuts to a perfectly-framed long shot taken from 60ft or so beyond them. Who set up that camera? 

2. On an unspecified mission there is footage of one of the astronauts driving a buggy the size of, say, a Mini Moke. How did the vehicle get onto the moon? In the module? It is far too big and even if one accepts that, how did they disembark it from the module which sits above the Moon’s surface on a extendable legs (and from which we see Armstrong and Aldrin descending with difficulty via a smaller ladder)

3. When the POV is from the Moke one can clearly see tyre tracks in front of the vehicle. In additional footage that comes with the DVD, one of the astronauts talks about a dream he had in which he was driving the buggy and could see tracks in front of him which lead him to an identical buggy in which he found himself dead. So was this sequence some kind of re-creation?  - although the buggy is colourised in other respects it looks consistent with rest of the supposedly as-it-happened photography.

Aside from the question of whether there was any Moon landing or not, clearly some of the photography was staged. Even if the spacemen were trained in photography (and we do see occasional glimpses of them at NASA holding small, presumably video, cameras) it is hard to swallow the idea that entirely encased in cumbersome suits with big helmets on their heads they somehow managed to get on-the-fly shots with professional-quality pans and zooms. Although not included here, I’ve seen footage of the module taking off from the Moon’s surface complete with a slow zoom. Taken by whom, one can only ask.

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a decent addition to the catalogue of material about America’s moon landings although it is far from questioning being content to illustrate the recollections and reflection of its speakers.

DVD Extras: Behind The Shadow, omitted material which did not make it to the final cut; Scoring Apollo; Exclusive Australian interview with David Sington; Original Theatrical trailer.

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