When I was sixteen years old, I read Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and a few months later the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon premiered. From that point on, I was hooked. Since then I’ve always been a Space Race and Cold War junkie. I could even make an argument that the 5th episode of the aforementioned mini-series, which focuses on the engineers at Grumman Aeronautics who built the Lunar Modules, influenced my decision to become an engineer. Not to bore you with my life story, but it’s important to be straightforward about my bias when discussing In the Shadow of the Moon—the latest documentary on the Apollo Program.
Taking a different approach than some other Apollo documentaries, like the History Channel’s The Race to the Moon, this film was not focused on how we made it to the moon. No engineers or flight directors were featured. Only the astronauts who went to the moon were interviewed; all of those who are still living participated except the legendarily reclusive Neil Armstrong. Rather than just recounting the story we already know, the astronauts reflected on their thoughts and feelings during their historic flights. One of the most interesting pieces was Gene Cernan’s admission that he felt guilty for being labeled a hero while his “buddies” were flying the “difficult missions” in Vietnam.
My only complaint was that while a great deal of narrative was devoted to Apollo 11, the following five missions were reduced to a montage. This was forgivable because even though Apollo 11 dominated the narrative, the screen time was still relatively balanced among all the crews. If nothing else, this was a great opportunity to feature the personalities of the astronauts. Alan Bean and Michael Collins especially came across as very congenial. Perhaps to highlight that they are still the same fun-loving daredevils they were forty years ago, some of interviews were shown split screen with stock footage of the same astronaut.
All in all, I was very satisfied with In the Shadow of the Moon. The astronauts were entertaining, sincere and even meditative and the historical footage blows the socks off of anything you’ll see on the Discovery Channel.
(4/5) 
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