A spectacular documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last week. Apollo 11 relives the NASA moon mission 50 years after the fact, with narration-free archival footage that will bring back memories to those who watched it on TV. Except this film is much clearer than our TV sets were in 1969.
“Apollo 11” is a cool, meticulous, at times enthralling documentary that captures the Apollo 11 flight in its entirety through raw footage drawn from the NASA vaults. Some of the footage is 70mm and quite spectacular; just about all the footage has never been seen before. We witness the hours before the launch, the surging cataclysm of the liftoff, the flight into space, the orbiting of the moon, the landing of the lunar module, Armstrong on the moon, Buzz Aldrin on the moon, the relaunch from the moon’s surface, the return flight, the re-entry into the atmosphere and the splashdown, all accompanied by the watchful natterings of mission-control analysts.