There aren't any new interviews in Apollo 11, no new narration, simply a minimum of onscreen text-mainly to spot who’s who, as well as provide some fundamental numerical data high time, distances, and astronaut vital signs. The audio from the film mostly originates from the original news coverage as well as the Mission Control tapes. The images (apart from some retro animation) come from the aforementioned archives, and check startlingly pristine. There’s one sequence early inside film when shots of an contemplative flight crew-Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins-are intercut which has a montage in their family photos, to offer some a feeling of what might’ve been under-going their minds because they strapped themselves onto a missile hurtling after dark stratosphere.
But generally, Apollo 11 just lets 1969’s pictures and sound tell the storyplot. This movie about considered one of that year’s biggest events seems as if it appeared in 1969, once the likes of D.A. Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman, Charlotte Zwerin, along with the Maysles brothers popularized a brand new kind of “fly within the wall” documentary filmmaking, more novelistic and much less explanatory. This is what magazine and newspaper reporters back then called “the new journalism,” reimagined as cinema.
Much of the storyline is told with little dialogue between glances. Early on, Zula questions the audition process: “Do you enjoy me for my voice? Or in general?” Later in France, she claims, “In Poland, you are a man. You’re different here.” And despite having relationships with other sites, she says her marriage “wasn’t within the church, thus it doesn’t count.” This establishes a private ceremony in a very bombed out church recalling Andrzej Wajda’s “Ashes and Diamonds” (1958).
It’s moments similar to this where the film reveals itself as a romantic drama greater than a noir. She floats the concept of danger when she admits she’s on parole for killing her father: “He created a mistake with my mother free movies , so I showed him his fault using a knife.” We suspect her motives again when she reveals that she’s “ratting” him over to communist supervisors. Most blatantly, she stands him up with a train station.
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