Documentary film review: The Wonder of It All

Waxing nostalgic for the lunar surface.

by John P. Meyer

Those attending the Veteran's Day (Nov. 11) evening screening of The Wonder of It All (at Dallas' Frontiers of Flight Museum) will find themselves experiencing a different kind of astronaut documentary.

In contrast to the slick, flashy, tug-at-your-patriotic- heartstrings In the Shadow of the Moon, Wonder director Jeffrey Roth concerns himself less with comprehensively chronicling the Apollo space missions and more with getting inside the heads of seven of the 12 men who walked on the lunar surface. Three of these space adventurers (Pete Conrad, Alan Shepard and James Irwin) have gone on to their figurative space travel rewards, while two (the somewhat reclusive Neil Armstrong and David Scott) declined to participate in filmmaker/interviewer Roth's documentary.

As mentioned during my conversation with director Roth, some of these guys divulge quite personal information over the course of their interviews: Buzz Aldrin delves into his own troubled family history, Charlie Duke admits to putting self-aggrandizement before his heartfelt religious beliefs and Gene Cernan waxes anti-heroic in regard to his astronautical exploits - occurring, as they did, at a time when his Navy flyer contemporaries were dodging communist anti-aircraft fire while laying down bombs and napalm in the rice paddies of southeast Asia. Cernan actually tears up a bit when he discusses having to leave the moon at the end of his and Harrison Schmitt's three-day stay.

The film starts with a straightforward narrative about the childhood and early careers of the astronauts, including explanations of the sorts of things that made them want to go to the moon; it then progresses through their (often amusing) lunar anecdotes and ends with more metaphysical discussions of whether their spirituality has been affected by their off-world experiences. (It's a split decision.)

Apollo 16 moonwalker John Young states to this day that we should never have abandoned our presence on the moon and continues to advocate for the Orion project slated to return us there; he also still wears turtlenecks. Alan Bean admits to worrying, just after touchdown on the lunar surface, whether their engines would ever start up again, comparing it to that moment during a road trip into the desert wilderness when you turn off the engine of your car. (Bean now paints detailed canvasses of moon landing and EVA scenes, employing for texture the hammer he carried during his Apollo 12 mission. Oh, and he wears some really loud shirts, I'm just sayin'.) Edgar Mitchell has been perhaps most affected by the big picture experience of traveling beyond Earth, having founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences and buying into that whole expansion-of-human-consciousness thing.

Charlie Duke talks about attending a recent backyard barbecue in Kansas, looking up at the moon and commenting, "I've been there." Not many folks can say that, and most of those who can have plenty to say in the course of this 84-minute documentary.

AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD CHOICE: "Maybe if we'd had room we could have taken Arthur C. Clarke." - Alan Bean, re. the paucity of space in their spacecraft

HOME AWAY FROM HOME: "We should have put up a base and stayed there. The world would be a better place if we had." - John Young