Ivan Radford | On 20, Jul 2024

Director: Anthony Philipson
Cast: Rufus Wright, Jack Tarlton, Patrick Kennedy
Certificate: TBC

Eight days, three hours, 18 minutes, 35 seconds. What could you do in that time? In 1969, that’s how long it took for Apollo 11 to go all the way to moon and back. Oh, and land on the surface. 8 Days: To the Moon and Back is a remarkable, immersive retelling of that awesome, ambitious mission.

The film has an inspired approach to capturing the entire trip. Rather than simply compile archive footage to form a documentary – that’s been done before by the flawless Apollo 11 – director Anthony Philipson instead turns to the (now declassified) audio recordings from the cockpit for its source material. Rooted in that previously unheard soundtrack, it painstakingly recreates every beat of what led up to and followed the iconic moments already seen thousands of times before. It brings to life the peril, the excitement and the nerves of three men hurtling in a metal container into space.

Throughout, the film makes the smart decision to use the actual audio itself. That means a tricky task for a cast who lip-synch to what was said by Neil Armstrong (Rufus Wright), Buzz Aldrin (Jack Tarlton) and Michael Collins (Patrick Kennedy). Backed up by carefully plotted out visual recreations of the journey, the trio do an excellent job of physically re-enacting the mission seamlessly in time with the sound. But it’s the voices themselves that really leave an imprint: there’s a human immediacy to their interactions that give us a real sense of what it was like in that tiny shuttle – as we hear three men far from home cracking jokes and expressing fears, as well as spouting technical jargon.

The result is a docudrama that reinforces afresh the stakes and tension behind what we now think of us a foregone conclusion, whether it’s the sound of an alarming going off or the moments of silence wondering about whether an engine will fire. Punctuated by news footage and title cards to skip us through the wider narrative, it’s an experimental, creative and innovative tribute to an equally groundbreaking endeavour. This ride, however, only takes 89 minutes.

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