Apollo 11 review new york times

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The “Oslo” playwright J.T. Rogers found himself moved stitching a story he thought he knew well: “It is a piece about hope and wonder.”

The playwright J.T. Rogers, left, with the actor Dakin Matthews, who will portray John Noble Wilford, a New York Times reporter who covered the moon landing.Credit...Tim Schutsky for The New York Times

[Read all Times reporting on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.]

On the phone with his interview subjects, J.T. Rogers had to keep hitting the mute button. He was weeping, and he didn’t want them to hear.

The conversations were research for his new play, “One Giant Leap, 50 Years On,” about the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969 — not, on the face of it, a tear-jerking topic.

But Mr. Rogers, 51, whose historically inspired peace-accords drama “Oslo” won the 2017 Tony Award for best play, was talking with people who’d experienced the mission up close. As he asked what it meant to them from a distance of five decades, the humanity of their responses got to him.

It wasn’t just their thoughtfulness or eloquence, he said one afternoon last week. It was also that many of them, having been present for such a hopeful human moment, were “so crushed about where they see our world politically now versus then.”

Those interviews form the heart of “One Giant Leap,” whose reading on Sunday evening at the Town Hall — part of a New York Times-sponsored celebration of the 50th anniversary — will be a starry affair. Directed by Bartlett Sher, the Tony winner who helmed “Oslo,” it will include three actors from his current Broadway production of “To Kill a Mockingbird”: Jeff Daniels, Dakin Matthews and LaTanya Richardson Jackson — whose husband, Samuel L. Jackson, will also be part of the 10-person “Giant Leap” cast.

[Read a roundup of events related to the Apollo 11 anniversary.]

The play, which Mr. Rogers described as a 45-minute “theater oratorio,” was commissioned about six months ago by The New York Times. He decided it should be cast across lines of race and age and gender, turning a story about what he called “white dudes with the same haircut” into a story that belongs to everyone.

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There’s a short scene near the end of “Apollo 11,” the thrilling new documentary about history’s greatest spaceflight, in which Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong make a TV broadcast on their way home from the moon.

“We’d like to give a special thanks to all those Americans who built the spacecraft, who did the construction, design, the tests, and put their heart and all their abilities into the [space]crafts,” says Armstrong. “To those people tonight we give a special thank you.”

The film cuts to a shot of thousands of technicians assembled in an immense hangar, beaming with pride. At the zenith of his fame, the hero proves his worth by honoring those to whom the glory is truly owed.

I watched “Apollo 11” twice this week, and came away with two very different impressions. What awed me the first time was scale: The crawler-transporter that moves the Saturn V rocket to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The rocket itself, standing 363 feet tall. People lining up for miles to watch the launch. The shuddering noise and force of liftoff. Speeds accelerating to 24,000 miles an hour. Re-entry temperatures hitting 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The smallness of Earth, the stillness of the moon, the limitlessness of space.

Everything is immense, mind-boggling. Having been born nearly a year after the last Apollo mission took flight, I have trouble wrapping my head around it. Reality isn’t supposed to be this epic.

By contrast, what I mainly noticed the second time around were the intimate sides of the endeavor. The look of suppressed nervousness on Collins’s face as he is being suited up on the morning of the flight. Biometric data showing Armstrong’s heart pounding at 156 beats a minute at the moment Eagle touches down on the lunar surface, belying his reputation as Mr. Coolstone. A shadow of deep melancholy that seems to overcome Aldrin as he speaks to his family once the mission is over.

Three men are going to try to fly to the moon. Three billion people will lionize them if they succeed; lament (or mourn) them if they fail; mock them if they screw up. No pressure.

How do they cope? In last year’s biopic, “First Man,” Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling) is portrayed as a 1950s guy stuck in a 1960s world. Repression is the key to his emotional composure, achieved at the expense of family life. The 2007 documentary “In the Shadow of the Moon,” which mixes footage of the Apollo missions with interviews with the astronauts (minus Armstrong) as older men, is more revealing. Everyone is his own man; each one deals with his fears in his own way. There’s more than one formula for the Right Stuff.

But “Apollo 11” offers an additional insight, particularly when it comes to Armstrong. Asked by a reporter to describe his feelings “as far as responsibilities of representing mankind on this trip,” Armstrong brings the question down to size: “It’s a job that we collectively said was possible, that we could do, and of course the nation itself is backing us, so we just sincerely hope that we measure up to that.”

The answer is quintessential Armstrong: He’s the guy who prefers to turn poetry into prose. The one time he seems least himself is when he utters the line that’s supposed to immortalize him: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Dropping the “a” before “man” winds up being his sole extraterrestrial mistake.

It’s not that Armstrong is incapable of eloquence. It’s that his manner of eloquence is direct, gracious and above all modest when everyone else — Walter Cronkite and Richard Nixon in particular — strains for grandiloquence. To borrow a line from Barack Obama, he knows too well that he didn’t build that. His sense of his place in history is that he’s mainly an accident of it.

And there lies the greatest marvel of the Apollo program: Not so much the size of the endeavor, or the machines that were built to accomplish it, but rather the quality of self-effacement among the men most associated with its success. Armstrong, easily one of the most celebrated men of the last half-century, refused to become a celebrity. He kept his politics to himself. He made no oracular pronouncements. He did not amass fabulous wealth.

He stayed humble, and human, in the era of relentless puffery and self-promotion. This, too, feels as bygone as the Saturn V, the Right Stuff, and the “one small step”— and as missed.

How do we reclaim it?

That’s a moonshot-scale question, but here’s a worthy contribution. As I was writing this column, I got a call from Ken Burns, a friend and renowned documentary maker, who told me about a new prize endowed by Boston philanthropists Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine in collaboration with the Library of Congress and The Better Angels Society. The award, which is currently accepting applications through June 1, will annually grant $200,000 to a young documentary filmmaker in the final stages of producing a feature film.

“We are in a situation right now where we are dialectically preoccupied: red state or blue state, gay or straight, rich or poor, male or female,” Ken told me by way of explaining the prize’s significance. He’s looking for an antidote. “Films that will reach a broad audience and speak to the enduring themes of what we are and what we share in common.” Winning entries, he added, will focus on American history, be nonpartisan, “Homeric in scope but intimate in details.”

“Apollo 11” is such a film. Go see it. Now, more please.

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Is it worth it to watch Apollo 11?

Everything is authentic. It is because of this mission and all other Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini missions that I went into the space business for a 34 year career. The launch sequence is the most incredible thing I've seen on film. I will definitely be buying the blu ray but of course it will not beat the IMAX.

Why is Apollo 11 so popular?

The Apollo 11 mission achieved what no other person in history had done before. As the first humans on another planetary body, NASA astronauts landed, July 20, 1969 on the surface of the moon.

Was the Apollo 11 mission a success or failure?

The overwhelming success of the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 and the subsequent Apollo 12 mission gave many the impression that lunar landings were almost routine in nature. Combined with clashes over the Vietnam War, the public's attention increasingly turned away from the Apollo missions.

Is Apollo 11 movie real footage?

It's all archival footage from 1969, restored to 4K in mind-blowing quality. The level of presentation, editing, and score make it feel like a dramatic sci-fi epic.