APOLLO
13 (Jun 1995) Director: Ron Howard.
Writers:
James Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger, William
Broyles Jr., Al Reinert.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton,
Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan, Clint Howard, Chris Ellis.
"O,
swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon…"
--
Shakespeare, Romeo
and Juliet.
"There will be other space projects and who knows, I might be part of them... We learn through failure."
--
Jim Lovell, from his diary, after rejection by NASA for the 1959 Mercury program.
As I try to watch Ron Howard's APOLLO 13, I
smell that familiar kerosene funk in the air: solid rocket
boosters firing, RP-1 propellant and liquid hydrogen surging,
flux capacitor giga-watting - yes, it's the Tom Hanks Oscar-Machine
chugging rugged in red-carpet mode.
Hanks is Jim Lovell, captain of APOLLO 13, launched by NASA in April 1970; the planned third manned mission to the Moon, aborted when an oxygen tank exploded mid-journey (precipitating the portentous line, "Houston, we have a problem!"), turning their Moon mission into a rescue mission and their landing module into a squeezy freezy lifeboat.
Thank goodness Tom Hanks was onboard!
Howard, we have a problem.
Trying
to film a story with so many integral characters is impossible
with a camera-magnet like Hanks tooling around on set. Our
media-driven lifestyle denotes that "star-power"
dictates character importance in a movie, so though Hanks
may play a prominent role as one of three astronauts
imperiled by the spacecraft malfunction, Every – Single
– Member - of NASA is equally worthy of the limelight
blindingly focused on Mr. Fantastic.
I'm not a Hanks Hater, but I do
feel that "rescue credit" is unduly focused on Statuette Boy.
In the real world, credit for the rescue of the seemingly-doomed
Apollo 13 craft is dispersed throughout hundreds of
personnel, each of them a Hero: not
least, the Flight Directors, Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney and
John Aaron (Kranz played by Ed Harris, the most notable
actor of the FD's, thereby implying he was the most "important"
– once again, sigh). Lunney, Kranz's relief FD, is
stoic Marc McClure, and Aaron - the
FD who identified "power" as key factor in the
life-saving stakes, thereby engineering the decision to
"turn off everything but the essentials" –
is fleshed out by the clinical-tastic Loren Dean. Astronaut
Ken Mattingly (dropped from the original Apollo 13 crew
for medical reasons) is Gary Sinise, all
suave intensity.
Lovell's
crew are Fred Haise (Bill Paxton, in his patented
"Game over, man!" swoon) and John Swigert (ever-dependable Kevin Bacon, whose presence in this movie
with so many other A-Listers puts him at least "two
degrees" closer to about 436 other actors…).
Unlike
the DeLorean DMC-12, or the LZ 129 Hindenburg, or the RMS
Titanic - all failures on a grand scale, all seemingly trespassing
on virgin technology and future advancement, with each failure
marking the end of an era for their respective milieux –
the "failure" of the 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission aided
in advancing space-faring dialect and paved the future with
skyward momentum for the International Space Station, the
Space Transportation System (Shuttles), Mars Soft Landers
and beyond…
Disabled
by a wiring malfunction that led to an explosion that leaked their oxygen into space, Apollo 13's prime directive
shifted from "frolic on moon at taxpayers' expense"
to "stay alive, no matter what occurs." Technical problems compound, each adversity
overlapping the previous one, with the spacecraft crew and
Mission Control united against the exigencies of the failing
mission itself.
Director
Howard intelligently chose to have nothing more than
true-to-life events provide the drama of APOLLO 13;
as obvious as this may sound, very few "true"
or "inspired by" films refrain from inserting
Hollywood subplot and cliché to ramp up the stakes
– with this tale, Howard did not need to. The phrase,
"You can't make this shit up!" springs to mind,
as all the "dramatic movie formulae" were present without even trying:
ticking clocks, family stakes, technological adversity as
villain, all encapsulated in the real life tale of three
astronauts who missed the moon but unwittingly hit a jackpot…
Had
the Apollo 13 crewmen died during their rescue attempt,
American fortitude would have suffered a blow infinitely
worse than the beating it took when either of the lightning-quick
Shuttle disasters stunned the nation. With the Shuttles,
it was over before anyone had time to realize problems had
even arisen. With Apollo 13, manifest effort was expended
over the course of four days; a public vigil during an avalanche
of adversity that would have broken the back of America
if the crew had not survived.
And
in the surviving, gradually attaining a success (read as
fame) far greater than any of the men who actually trod
the Moon's surface (barring Armstrong and Aldrin). Proof?
Tell me: who were the three astronauts of 1971's Apollo 14? (Not
even Apollo 11 (1969) had the honor of having a pinball machine created after them.) Responding to the notion
that this could be "the worst disaster NASA's ever experienced,"
Kranz retorts, "I believe this is going to be our
finest hour." He was right.
An
exemplary aspect of this film is the unobtrusiveness of
its computer-generated visuals. Though Georgie Lucas believes
he has the monopoly on CGI-filmmaking (simply because he
owns the company that icings a large percentage of A-List
blockbuster), Ron Howard illustrates – via Digital
Domain's finesse - how to incorporate CGI into one's movie
with class and taste. Quite simply - this is as good as
it gets! Every star-field, exterior shot and moon view is
seamless subtlety; without even realizing it, we see new
footage of Apollo 13 rising on the Saturn V pillar of
fire; Lovell's fantasy of descending to the Moon's surface
(made ever more poignant by the fact that he has lost the
opportunity) captures the sheer, crazy joy of raking one's
fingers through regolith and gazing skywards at a gibbous
earth-rise… No need for dandy villains, exotic beasts
or killer droids, Howard's judicious use of CGI captures
everything that Lucas's imprudent abuse lost – true
magnificence and awe.
Lucas
directed Howard in 1973's AMERICAN GRAFFITI. In sooth,
the Padawan has become the Master.
It
is a testament to the talent of this Master that he could
fashion such an involving movie from three guys stranded
in a refrigerator for a week and a pack of Reservoir Dogs
jargonizing at outdated computers.
If
not for those Apollo 13 "failures" (Lovell, Haise
and Swigert), Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell
of Apollo 14 might have had a more glorious day in the sun
– or the Moon, as it were…
APOLLO
13 (Jun 1995) Director: Ron Howard.
Writers: James Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger, William
Broyles Jr., Al Reinert.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton,
Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan, Clint Howard, Chris Ellis.
