You wouldn’t think that a movie about the Apollo 11 mission that consists simply of footage shot at the time of the event could present a compelling, inspiring story. Yet this film does just that.
This is a documentary that shows, rather than tells. And what it shows is the enormity of the achievement— not in physical, but intellectual, terms. From the astronauts to the flight director to the NASA engineers—hundreds of them, shown at their stations, calculating, writing, monitoring, thinking, each responsible for some facet of the mission, all their work integrated into a single, unprecedented feat—one implicit message shines through: this amazingly complex undertaking was a product of the mind, the dedicated, focused, rational mind.