I’m not the sort who traffics much in nostalgia, per se, much as I do cherish my rich memories of my younger years and continue to enjoy the music I grew up and came of age with. But oh yeah, whatever nostalgic impulses I do have were quite happily fed by director Richard Linklater’s latest film, “Apollo 10 1/2.”
It’s an animated film, rotoscoped from the performances of real actors, set in Houston, Texas, on the verge of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission. Stanley, a fourth grader who lives in a suburban neighborhood, is surrounded in his quite typical late-’60s boyhood by the allure of space, the last frontier, thanks in good part to NASA’s nearby Manned Spaceflight Center. And dreams of being an explorer into the unknown realms of space beyond Earth’s orbit and the Moon.
For anyone who grew up in the 1960s, it’s a delightful rocket ride back to that era, recreating not just the settings, aspects and predominant lifestyle of the times but bringing the vibe of living as a youth in that time back alive with a vibrance that resonates with the futuristic hopes and ambitions of that age. It’s also a film of personal significance to me. And I hope its animated appeal – Linklater has already done two stunningly original and innovative “cartoons,” “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly” – will also draw the generations that follow mine into a better understanding of my generation’s young lives, and maybe even be not so ready to declare, “OK boomer.” Those of us who are boomers and not much younger will marvel over how much our world has changed from then to now.
I was enthralled by the Mercury program’s efforts to put an American in space from the first countdown, and had an uncle in Florida who worked for a company that supplied NASA. In 1961, I watched the inaugural Mercury flight of astronaut Alan Shepard, sitting on the floor in front of the TV with my model rocket and world globe, ready to do my own tracking of the space shot. When Gus Grissom’s capsule sank and was lost after its ocean landing from the second launch, I wrote a letter to NASA on my seven-year old’s letterhead chiding the agency for the screw-up and asked my Dad to send it. Many years later, following my father’s memorial, my siblings and I were in my parents’ bedroom as my oldest brother went through and handed out to us various special things he kept stowed in a wooden box atop his dresser. In there was the letter, unsent. As my brother Tony handed it to me, he said, “This may indicate that Dad” – an MIT grad and avid science buff with whom I had quite a complicated relationship – “loved you best.”
Linklater’s films also figure in my life. In 1989, I arrived in Austin, Texas, into the unique and legendarily “weird” local young adult subculture of “Slacker,” Linklater’s feature debut, and would come to know and even work with many people featured in that seminal modern indie film classic, including a passing acquaintance with the filmmaker. And have watched him develop one of most creatively diverse, imaginative and innovative oeuvres among contemporary filmmakers as Austin began to grow as a cinematic hot spot.
Much as I could rave about the merits and charms of any number of Linklater’s movies, I find “Apollo 10 1/2” to certainly be his sweetest and maybe best yet in a filmography studded with gems. Tautly written and edited, it gleans near-countless essential elements from American life and culture in the 1960s onto the screen to imbue a feeling of what it felt was to be young, somewhat innocent yet also aware – dare I say “woke” about this lucid dream of a movie? – through such a crucial decade. (And, in my view, provides an ameliorative to the simplistic ‘60s review of “Forrest Gump,” a film I despise.) Even the small touches like a multiracial school class and a principal’s assistant smoking cigarettes in her office are evocative if not provocative.
Linklater has also proven himself a cinematic Jungian, able to deftly draw out essences and dreams from the collective consciousness, most notably in “Dazed and Confused,” which rightfully should be somewhere near if not atop the many films about high school. And like that movie, with its ultimate pop song playlist from its day, “Apollo 10 1/2” gleans the late ‘60s radio and stereo waves to collect a spot-on soundtrack.
And ultimately, it does all of the above and more with a sense of fun, a modesty to match its genius, and a rich sense of humanity – qualities that have become a bit rare in the tidal wave of theatrical and streaming feature films that drenches today’s culture. Initial indications from the websites that track critical and audience receptions for films augur well for “Apollo 10 1/2.” I hope at next year’s Academy Awards to see the team from my current hometown (for now) – some of whom formed the molten creative core that fueled Austin’s rise to becoming an if not the American city of this moment – win some Oscar statuettes.
DOCUMENTARY FILM: “WBCN and The American Revolution” – Another quite different trip back to the late 1960s and early ‘70s via the story of the progressive Boston album rock radio station and how it was sparked by and expressed the musical, cultural and political tenor of the times,
TV SERIES: “The Girl from Plainville” – Streaming TV is overloaded with true-crime story dramatizations, many of them wallowing in dramatic mediocrity. This one, however, is superb, driven by a superb portrayal by Elle Fanning – whose role here and in “The Great” mark her as one of our finest young actresses – as a high schooler charged with encouraging her boyfriend’s suicide. Added to that is Chloë Sevigny’s richly nuanced take on the boy’s mother, and superb writing throughout.
Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2022
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