Apollo 11: NZIFF Review

Apollo 11: NZIFF Review

There's no way you don't know how this story goes.

And on the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, with timing that can only be described as fortuitous in extremis, the film festival is playing the Apollo 11 doco on the day the moon landing happened.

The film is of the kind of calibre you'd expect from those like CNN who are involved, but director Todd Douglas Miller manages to create a kind of unfussy portrait of the hours of the build up to the launch and the days after.

It's intriguing in that, despite some over-produced moments of the bombast of a score intruding and trying to provoke drama, a film takes you directly back to the era, and the ordinary everyday "heroes" of NASA, who were not called Buzz or Neil.

Camera footage early on chooses to focus on the scale of the gantry by shooting from the ground up, sets the tone by focussing the cameras on those inside the control centre, and the gathered crowds who look like they're there to be part of a rock-n'roll event; it's here Miller pitches the actual event as something that everyone aspired to be part of, and which was monumental at the time, but has slowly been dwarfed by the extraordinary times we live in, and the naysayers who try to detract from its happening or its relevance.

CCTV footage, and footage shot within the craft, along with some Asteroids-level graphics build a portrait that's selective in the imagery it presents, but one which builds a tapestry of our greatest achievement.

Apollo 11 uses footage only of the moment, archives of the time and sights and sounds to create something that is never heart-stopping but is always awe-inducing. It's a time capsule, definitely, but it's a film of its time, and also one that showcases the fearlessness of man's occasionally indomitable spirit.