A space cowboy’s tale

“I wanted to make a film about an old space cowboy.” These words from director Mark Craig – spoken to an audience at Sheffield Doc/Fest just before the film’s world premiere on 8 June – are a good introduction to The Last Man on the Moon, which examines the Apollo era through the story of Eugene “Gene” Cernan. In 1972 Cernan commanded NASA’s final lunar mission, Apollo 17, and thus became the last person to set foot on the Moon – so far.

In directing The Last Man on the Moon, Craig was in an unusual position as a filmmaker. Thanks to NASA’s extensive archives, he could take his pick of footage. Yet it is clear after just a few seconds that Craig’s film is not just another documentary about space history. Aware that the Moon landings have already been covered in numerous books, films and documentaries, the British director has chosen instead to make a more cinematic work, aimed at capturing the era’s optimistic spirit and the bravado of the pilots. To do this, he combines archive footage with computer-generated imagery (CGI), interleaved with a stylized video profile of Cernan in the present day and even a smattering of cartoons.

There is, of course, a well-worn argument against mixing archive footage and CGI, which is that doing so tends to blur the line between fact and fiction. Those who prefer crystal clarity on the origin of what they are watching may experience a few uncomfortable moments in The Last Man on the Moon. But in this case, such blurriness seems like a price worth paying for the sake of narrative and continuity. This is a story about the spirit of adventure, and about our twilight cowboy looking back on the exploits of his younger self. In accommodating his reminiscences, it seems appropriate for the film to glide smoothly between the past and the present. One could also argue that CGI brings a stunning stillness to space, and may offer a more accurate vision of what astronauts actually see than could be achieved with grainy archive footage.

The tone of the film is set in the first scene. We are at a rodeo in Texas, and the film cuts between the sporting spectacle and close-ups of Cernan in his Stetson hat as he admires the bravery of the men being hurled around on the backs of the bulls. These images are interrupted by complementary footage of an astronaut being rapidly spun around in a flight simulator, as Cernan’s expression reveals that his mind has drifted back to his former life. “I look up there and I might just reflect for a half a minute or so. I can take myself there at the speed of thought,” Cernan informs us via voiceover as we now see him staring at a fire on his ranch.

Lines like these suggest that Craig is on to something when he describes Cernan as the “most eloquent” of the Apollo astronauts alive today. It is also worth noting that the film’s screenplay is based on a book of the same name that Cernan co-wrote in 2000 with Don Davis. That book, however, was just one of the more recent stages of the public-relations marathon that Cernan has been on since he hung up his spacesuit. The space cowboy has spent years giving public lectures and meeting dignitaries around the world, and he clearly thrives on it. But the pleasure and privilege of going to space has also brought its darker moments, and Craig does not shy away from depicting some of them in his documentary. For instance, we hear Cernan and his first wife Barbara Cernan Baker reflecting on the breakdown of their marriage during one period of excessive touring. We also see him talking candidly with his daughter from that marriage about how he wasn’t always there for her when he should have been.

Cernan’s inability to balance family life with being a celebrity spaceman is echoed by the experiences of the other astronauts who appear in the film. Richard “Dick” Gordon, who flew as command-module pilot of Apollo 12, sums it up well when he says “I like to think we worked hard and played hard.” Indeed, parts of the documentary could have been lifted straight from the film Top Gun, particularly the scene in which Cernan (speaking in the present day) starts to compare the way you should treat an aeroplane to the way you should treat a “good woman”.

For some viewers, episodes like this may stray a little too far into “boys and their toys” territory. But on the other hand, becoming an astronaut in the Apollo era was not something that a mild-mannered, moderate human being would have done, and in this respect the film perfectly captures the arrogance of the elite young male pilots who made up the early astronaut corps. And as in Top Gun, these apparently bulletproof youths experienced some spectacular tragedies. Cernan’s first space flight, on the Gemini 9 mission, came after the two primary crew members were killed in a training flight crash. The film also revisits the horror of the fire that destroyed the Apollo 1 rocket on the launch pad, killing the three astronauts – Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee – on board.

Cernan and his then-wife had been particularly close to the Chaffees, living on the same street. Cernan Butler explains that in some ways, staying at home was just as difficult as going to space, and the film gives viewers a genuine sense of the responsibility and anguish that she and others felt. While this is not the first time that astronauts’ wives have been profiled (see, for example, The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel), their inclusion here again shows that they were much more than foils for their husbands’ bravery. The film also briefly acknowledges some of the wider social unrest that was sweeping across the US in the late 1960s due to the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. “The country was in a mess,” says Cernan. “But this was going on out there somewhere. Maybe we were a little cocooned in this big world of ours.”

By the end of the film we are left in no doubt that despite all the attention and public appearances, our space cowboy is at his happiest when he is away from the madness of the world, either on the Moon or on his?ranch. It is this frankness in Cernan’s story that really lifted The Last Man on the Moon far above my expectations. I had anticipated a well-crafted historical piece with CGI, and indeed, I have now filed away a few more NASA nuggets for the science round of my next pub quiz.

Far more importantly, though, I found myself getting caught up in the adventure of this cowboy’s lifetime. As the film draws to a close, we see Cernan back at the ranch enjoying a leisurely horse ride with his buddy Fred “Baldy” Baldwin, whom he has known since his time as a naval aviator. The pair agree that they won’t be riding too fast today and Cernan says to his friend, “Hey Baldy, are you ready to admit that we ain’t got what we used to got?” Only age, it seems, has finally humbled this cowboy.