I finally saw this, purely by happy coincidence so close to the anniversary of the Moon landing. It was excellent.
I'm not sure if I should call this a movie or a documentary; I almost think it's something new. With the exception of a few new diagrammatic graphics, it's made entirely of original news and other recorded footage of the time, restored to full HD in superb quality. This really adds something. It feels like the reporting of an event that happened yesterday - rather than back in the distant past, when everyone was slightly blurred and only didn't notice because they were so grateful they'd escaped the even worse earlier condition of being monochrome.
The editing is superb too. It's got the factual content of a news report, the depth of a documentary, all delivered with the narrative and cinematographic style of a movie. Basically if Christopher Nolan filmed the news, it would look like this. There are no modern-day interviews (in fact little of any interviews at all), and contemporary commentary is used sparingly but always appropriately, much like the minimalist soundtrack. It's quite unlike First Man, which is very much a biopic of Neil Armstrong up to the end of the mission, being exclusively about the mission itself and not the astronauts. So in that sense I suppose it's more conventional, but overall the experience is quite different to any other Moon landing story.
While the movie itself is completely apolitical, saving the brief commentary on the unity of mankind (which will no doubt enrage some silly idiot or other), it's hard not to see this through the darkened and broken lens of contemporary politics. America had shitty politicians then as well, and a global political situation that was infinitely more dangerous than the present. And yet they managed to pull off the greatest feat of exploration in history. If you'll pardon a final cliché, by restoring this story of the past to make it accessible to the present, perhaps we may yet think better of the future.
I give this 10/10. It does exactly what it set out to do with absolute perfection, or so close as makes no difference.
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