The Wonder of It All

Some interesting moments, but nothing terribly unique
The history of the lunar landings has been covered by many documentaries over the years, so the story itself is one that has been well told. The Wonder of It All took a different approach in interviewing only the surviving moonwalkers (who were willing to participate), giving us their perspective on the program. While this gives you more depth into the thoughts of a very select group of astronauts, it doesn't tell you much of anything about the actual history of the Apollo program. A space fanatic will understand all of the details surrounding the stories already (and will have already heard many of the stories contained within...either from other documentaries or from reading the astronaut biographies). As a space fanatic, I don't necessarily mind not having bits of the story re-told to me. The average viewer, however, may not have the luxury of knowing the rest of the story beforehand.

Also, the film itself is largely just shot-after-shot of the astronauts being...

Exploring Inner Space
This is a great companion piece to David Sington's film In the Shadow of the Moon.

Sington's film dealt more with the Apollo program and the missions themselves. This film focuses on the men who actually walked on the moon. During Apollo, we tended to think of the astronauts as identical and interchangeable -- maybe it was the spacesuits that hid their faces; maybe it was the terse technical jargon they spoke -- but here they appear as very different human beings, united by high intelligence and fierce determination. The film examines how, as distinct individuals, they shaped our exploration of the moon, and were shaped by it.

In a very subtle way that might not even have been recognized during the actual interviews, this film turns into an exploration of inner space. Instead of science lessons from Apollo, these are life lessons from Apollo.

Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, who left...

A Unique Gem You Can't MIss
The Wonder of It All is one of those smaller movies that the studio system doesn't know what to do with, so they just ignore it, and in doing so, deprive the public of the kind of film they would undoubtedly enjoy and savor. The footage is impressive, but more interesting is how the filmmakers have chosen to look at things from the perspective of the moonwalkers as humans, not as the professional heroes we have all been trained to see them as. These men are people first, with real emotions and feelings (though, it might be questions in John Young's segments :-)).

The Wonder of it All is not afraid to ask what it is like to be a man and do these things, rather than what did the training tell you it was like. This is a truly human and emotional film (and I am not even a space buff) that resonates on many levels.

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