- America's race to space in the 1950s/60s
- A boy's relationship to a chimpanzee
Let me first spend a few words on the first aspect. James Woods plays Dr. van Huber, a German scientist "imported" from Germany after WWII. The real person was Wernher von Braun. He developed the rocket "Vergeltungswaffe 2" (V2) in Peenemünde from 1937 on. The V2 (former A4 - "Aggregat 4") was supposed to be the answer to the allied bombing terror over German cities that caused the death of more than a million of civilians (just a quick reminder: those air raids, ordered by Winston Churchill, had only one goal - kill as many civilians as possible; it was a brutal mass murder with the victims being mostly women and children since the men were at war). But the outcome wasn't as desired - the V2 was in the fledgling stages; the first deployment for the war wasn't until September 1944, the targeted precision wasn't very high and there was also a high number of launch failures.
This is a "V2" at a successful launch in Peenemünde at the beginning of 1943:
(© LuftArchiv.de)
In June 1945 von Braun and 126 of his colleagues relocated to the United States where they continued their work in White Sands (New Mexico). The film begins in 1957 after the Soviets have shot their first satellite, the "Sputnik", into space. It was kind of a shock for the Americans and they pushed the rocket program even more now.
In 1969, the first spacecraft, "Apollo 11" (model "Saturn 5"), landed on the moon. This success hadn't been possible without the unremitting assiduity of von Braun.
Here is a picture of Wernher von Braun at Cape Canaveral (NASA, Florida):
(© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin)
Now for the second aspect of the film. The first efforts of shooting rockets into outer space weren't very successful: they had to be destroyed when they deviated from their suggested course. That's why it was way too risky to man such a rocket. So what do you do if you can't take a man? You use an animal! Van Huber's son Billy (Alex D. Linz) finds interest in animal trainer Dr. McGuinness' (Annabeth Gish) work. Totally against the will of his father, Billy starts working as an assistant to McGuinness and becomes more and more friends to a chimpanzee called "Mac" (the original was "Ham"), who will be the passenger of the first "manned" American spacecraft.
The film also tells us about the father-son relationship that is not the best at first (mildly spoken), but becomes much better in the end. I wished the film had focused even more on that subject, but hey, you don't have unlimited time in a movie if you want to keep it below 2 hours. The DVD's extras feature a set of deletes scenes. There were several scenes taken out that described resentments towards Germans from school boys and one of van Huber's colleagues. By the way: the film was shot on original locations. For example, the mission control center in Cape Canaveral is usually part of a museum. The "Race to Space" film crew was the first of it's kind allowed to shoot on this location. As stated in the commentary and the Making-Of, this film hadn't been feasible without the great support from NASA and the military.
The DVD is packed with extras: there is a production commentary, a Making-Of, a very interesting documentation about the original chimpanzee "Ham" (narrated by Alex Linz!), a documentation about the animal training, deleted scenes, storyboards, bloopers and a commercial about the Kennedy Space Center. Great stuff, guys. I can recommend this film to everyone. It's one of the best and maybe most overlooked films of the year 2001.
