Apollo 13 is one of my ‘watch anytime’ movies. I can watch these movies anytime, anywhere, no convincing needed. Usually, when I like a movie this much I ask myself why. For Apollo 13, I have so many answers to this question.
Consider for a moment what is at stake here. An explosion occurs on a manned space flight to the Moon. There is no rescue possible in a space flight. The list of number of things that could go wrong is endless. This is not just another experiment that may fail. Human lives are at stake. If an experiment in a remote laboratory fails, no one knows about it. In space slight, the whole world is watching and there is no way to hide a failure.
Apollo 13 is the most authentic movie about space flight that I have ever seen. Director Ron Howard went to great lengths to make the movie as accurate as possible. The dialogues between Apollo 13 crew and Houston are almost verbatim reproductions of the actual manuscript. No attempt is made to dumb down the technicalities. We are never told what ‘main bus B undervolt’ means or what happens when the spaceship gets ‘too close to the center’ but it does not matter. In fact, this creates a very realistic picture of enormous complexity of the task.
Truth is much, much stranger than fiction. How many anti-climaxes does this movie have? First, the oxygen in Odyssey is falling so they have to transfer the astronauts to LEM. Then they have to find a way to fit a square peg in a round hole, literally, in order to reduce the carbon dioxide level in the LEM. And finally, one the scariest scene I have ever seen in a movie. The astronauts have to steer the spaceship manually while executing the engine burn. Can you imagine a scarier thing? One mistake and you could be off into the infinity of space, never to return. I hold my breath every time I watch this scene.
Tom Hanks plays astronaut Jim Lovell. The film is based on the book Lost Moon : The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffery Kluger. Tom Hanks lives this character, as he has done throughout his career. The nuances that he brings to this role are too many to list. I also loved Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert. I always feel that Bacon has been underrated.
The character that impressed me was of the flight director Gene Cranz played by Ed Harris. I love leading actors delivering great performances as much as everyone else but sometimes I am more partial to supporting characters who leave their mark. For example, Jason Robards playing a cowboy in Once Upon a Time in the West and editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee in All The Presidents Men. Can you imagine two characters that are more apart?
Gene Cranz is an ideal leader. He listens to all suggestions and takes quick decisions. He is under tremendous pressure but at no point does he waver which is also a characteristic of the whole crew – except for one guy who is always pessimistic. The emphasis is on ‘working the problem’. Gene never gives up. Even when things look bleak, he is confident that ‘this is going to be our finest hour’.
The amazing thing about space flight is that it’s all classical physics as dreamt by Sir Isaac Newton. You know exactly where the spaceship is going to land and at what speed. No esoteric probabilities of Quantum Mechanics or exotic parallel universes. This is one of the finest demonstrations of how well science works.
I once met a Japanese guy in Seoul who could see Mount Fuji from his house and every day for forty years he drew a sketch of how it looked – clear, clouded or sunny. Imagine living next to Mount Fuji and actually being able to see it every day with fresh eyes.
This kind of vision is envious. We get used to things too quickly. Space flights are becoming so common that we don’t think about them twice. While this is but natural, losing sight of the grandeur of science is fatal to the scientific spirit. Richard Feynman was one of those rare people who never lost this sense. Watch how his eyes light up when he talks about physics.
Whenever I catch myself skipping over a report of a successful launch, I go and watch Apollo 13.
