Knowledge for all should never take a backseat to the
problems of the few.
This ideal kept buzzing in my head as I watched Al Reinert’s 1989
Academy Award nominated documentary, on the Apollo space missions to
the moon, For All Mankind. At a crisp 79 minutes, it’s a short
documentary, and in it Reinert culled over 6000 hours of film taken
about all the Apollo missions from Apollo 1 through Apollo 17. But,
unlike other documentaries I’ve seen on the subject of space
exploration, Reinert - a newspaper man, not a film expert nor director
before this, does something great - he mixes and matches footage from
all the flights that made it into space, even the ill fated Apollo 13
(as well as some from the Mercury and Gemini missions). This has the
effect of truly making the whole effort of reaching and exploring the
moon seem one continuous thing (which it was) rather than discreet
missions. The astronauts, thus, become ‘astronauts’- undifferentiated
and interchangeable, which was NASA’s goal - that any of them could
handle any facet of any mission.
While there is no ‘tale,’ so to speak, most of us know it, and the film
really becomes a collage of images and recorded remembrances from the
men who, in this age of devalued terminology, truly were heroes - i.e.
- going way above and beyond the call of duty, in service for the
benefit of all mankind. Yes, there’s no doubt that sans the Cold War,
we would not have gone to the moon, and the evidence of this is that
the last man to step foot on the moon, astronaut Gene Cernan, did so
almost thirty-seven years ago, and the next will likely do so a decade
or two from now; but, that only heightens the accomplishment all of the
Apollo astronauts, and not just the ‘lucky’ Neil Armstrong, who got to
be numero uno on the moon. Listening to the astronauts recall their
moments, literally, in the sun, and especially the one sequence where
an astronaut describes a moving dream he had on another world, someone
like myself, born in 1965 (at the tail end of the decade or so from the
mid 50s though mid-60s, when young boys were born into astronautmania)
can only feel embarrassment over the squandering of such human
potential and achievement while we still squabble over resources and
material things. I realized, too, while watching this film, that my
wife, born in the Bicentennial year of 1976, has not witnessed a man on
the moon in her lifetime. To a man who grew up playing with NASA
licensed toys in the early 1970s, this is truly astounding.
The images are quite good, and, in the DVD commentary of The Criterion
Collection DVD, director Reinert explains, in the DVD commentary, that
this is because he and his crew took the original film (not the
negatives) and processed and transferred it themselves. And, when they
made copies, they made the copies stand out even more than the
originals. Reinert’s words are informative, but the commentary track
truly belongs to his co-commentator, the aforementioned last man on the
moon, astronaut Gene Cernan. Sometimes straight on, other times deep,
other times poetic (but not in the pseudopoetry that so many bad
commentators use), Cernan is a joy to listen to, for he expounds on
Reinert’s points, and then makes points that sometimes truly elicit the
images the viewer is seeing. Yet, Cernan never lards on the
technospeak. The viewer is always elevated by his comments. This has to
rank in the pantheon of film commentaries because, even as an audio
text, it is outstanding. The rest of the DVD extra features are also
first rate- astronaut Alan Bean has a feature on his moon paintings,
with commentary by himself, there is extra footage of blastoffs, and a
feature that lets the viewer identify the otherwise generic
astronautical lumpenmenschen. Overall, this has to be one of the best
Criterion releases in their catalogue, not only for the work of Reinert
on the film and the excellent commentary, but also because this is,
truly, a magnificent document that will only increase in value, as the
years go by. Perhaps only The Up Series, by Michael Apted, and Errol
Morris’s The Fog Of War, are other documentaries, along with this, that
will be able to be seen in centuries and not lose any of their
relevance.
Another aspect of this film, however, that lends it uniqueness, is that
it is, in a sense, a pure documentary - just the images and words of
those involved. It has no political nor philosophical; agenda. Too much
agitprop has infected documentaries of recent years. A Certain Kind Of
Death is perhaps the only recent documentary I can think of that trusts
its audience to this extent. Susan Korda, the film’s editor, also
deserves notice. It is truly rare that in any film (fictive or
documentary) editing plays such a key role, but this is one, and it is
not in the length of the particular scenes and how they are edited, but
in which images and scenes are in the film, and what other ones (and
words- culled from hours of astronaut interviews) they are juxtaposed
with. A really great job, and not a wasted second in the film, right
from the opening shot of President John F. Kennedy’s tossing down of
the gauntlet in a speech at Baylor University to the final shots of the
missions in flight. Brian Eno’s score is also noteworthy.
Of course, the only negative thing concerning this film is nothing of
its own doing; it is the waste of decades since. Cernan, in the
commentary, speaks of sometimes feeling that President Kennedy actually
reached into this century, and forcefully willed NASA to the moon
decades ahead of time, and I am forced to agree. The tepidity of the
public to intellectual and artistic pursuits is only emphasized by
witnessing folk, from not too long ago, who treated such ideas as
ideals to be cherished and nourished, not dismissed. The moon landing
is one of those rare instances where a single act literally changed
mankind’s view of itself, yet, it did not change enough of it to
fundamentally better us all. That fault is society’s, not the men and
women who achieved this monumental thing. And hats off to Al Reinert
for taking up a task even NASA did not feel a need doing, and doing it
so well. Simply put, whether a fan of Criterion, documentaries,
history, or science, this DVD is one of the few essential films to
treasure and explore. If only those political hacks who fund NASA
understood exploration and the value of knowledge, perhaps we’d already
have had our Martian Apollos and Armstrong. One can still dream little
boy dreams now and again, eh?
--
The Dan Schneider Interviews: The Most Widely Read Interview Series in
Internet History
--
Roger Ebert calls Dan Schneider, 'observant, smart, and makes every
effort to be fair,' and states,
'What is remarkable about these many words is that Schneider keeps an
open mind,
approaches each film afresh, and doesn't always repeat the same
judgments.
An ideal critic tries to start over again with every review.'
--
Member of the Internet Film Critic Society (IFCS)
Criterion Collection and Classic DVD Examiner
www.examiner.com/x-19688-Criterion-Collection-and-Classic-DVD-Examiner
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Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension