The visual splendor in Al Reinert’s For All Mankind seems designed to remedy the audience’s collective memory of the moon landing as a grainy, square image on television. Between 1968 and 1972, the Apollo Program sent nine missions to the moon, each equipped with film equipment to document discoveries and obstacles, and Reinert’s distillation of the literally thousands of hours of footage stashed in NASA’s archives give the impression of a single outer-space journey.
The found-footage voyage is given a familiar sci-fi trajectory. Brave men are fitted into bulky space suits while engineers stare at screens in the control room, and the poker faces that the astronauts employ to try to hide their anxiety during liftoff breaks into unguarded awe as the Earth is viewed from the rocket’s porthole. Save for an opening speech by John F. Kennedy, the film deliberately discards exposition and context. For one, there’s no attempt at differentiating one mission from another, and, even though they are either glimpsed in the footage or heard in the soundtrack, none of the great Apollo missioners (including Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell, Mike Collins, and Alan Bean) are identified by name.
The approach may flatten the political perspective of the Space Race, yet lends the footage (such a goldmine of flag-waving imagery for the likes of Ron Howard and Michael Bay) a timeless inclusiveness, honoring the film’s title by positing a trip to the moon that’s a hearteningly communal enterprise. More sensuous spectacle than analytical reportage, For All Mankind doesn’t starve for privileged moments. Sequences such as a vision of the blue globe from the back of the rocket (through a circular opening that suggests a silent-movie iris) or the gliding shots of the lunar surface stretching into inky-black horizons visualize what one astronaut describes as the mission’s feeling of “supreme elation.” If not the screen’s ultimate portrait of space travel, For All Mankind remains a peerless planetarium show.
Image/Sound
Criterion’s 4K UHD features transfers of new 4K digital restorations of both the original 1.33:1 framing and the alternate 1.85:1 theatrical presentation. Since the original NASA footage that comprises the film consists of wildly varying qualities, For All Mankind will never have a uniform look and some sequences retain their softness and chunky grain levels even in true 4K. Still, image detail practically leaps off the screen, particularly in certain shots that capture the Earth’s clouds and ocean waves as seen from space and the surface of the moon. The 5.1 surround sound audio is equally impressive, lending a newfound depth and richness to Brian Eno’s legendary score, a rich, booming bass that bolsters the launch sequences, and additional clarity to the often muffled dialogue of the spacebound astronauts.
Extras
All of the extras here have been ported over from Criterion’s 2000 DVD and 2009 Blu-ray releases. The audio commentary featuring director Al Reinert and Apollo 17 commander Eugene A. Cernan is an insightful look into the film’s arduous construction from over 6,000 hours of NASA footage. Pairing nicely with the track is the 30-minute making-of documentary An Accidental Gift, which delves into the methods that NASA used to capture the footage. The remaining extras are interesting but far less essential, including a selection of excerpted interviews with 15 Apollo astronauts and a featurette about Apollo 12 and Skylab astronaut Alan Bean’s space-related artwork. The disc also has a few brief clips of liftoff footage and comes with a bound booklet with archival essays by Reinert and film critic Terrence Rafferty.
Overall
That’s one small step for Criterion, one giant leap to 4K.
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