For All Mankind Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

For All Mankind Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov June 30, 2009

Al Reinert's "For All Mankind" (1989) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The supplemental features on the release include archival audio commentary recorded by the director and commander Eugene A. Cernan; on-screen interviews with fifteen of the Apollo astronauts, NASA audio highlights and liftoff footage, and more. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

We choose to go to the Moon!

Al Reinert’s For All Mankind is a film that nowadays brings out different emotions in me. It reminds me of a glorious time when America was united behind a group of men determined to make history. When they did, the joy and elation the nation experienced were truly unprecedented. This was a time when it was right to be proud and patriotic, so when I am reminded of it, I always feel good.

But For All Mankind usually makes me extremely sad, too. It is because it revives chilly memories of an era when the world was on the brink of World War III, divided by political ideologies that nowadays seem utterly preposterous. A young, optimistic and very patriotic President Kennedy delivers one of his greatest speeches in it as well, so my mind inevitably ends up pondering what America could have been if he had survived that horrible day in Dallas. Perhaps we would not have become as prejudiced and divided as we are today.

For All Mankind chronicles the history of the Apollo 11 mission while it effectively reconstructs the preparation work and journey of the three astronauts -- Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin -- that landed on the Moon. The big picture is carefully assembled through personal recollections -- with the best coming from Armstrong and Aldrin -- as well as a wide variety of terrific archival footage.

It is important to note that the many men whose voices are heard on the archival footage remain unidentified. Initially, it feels a bit strange, but it is not long before the intent becomes crystal-clear -- the voices belong to us, the overwhelmed human race, witnessing an event of historic proportions.

Despite plenty of easily recognizable native limitations, the bulk of the archival footage looks quite incredible. Reinert and a team of specialists reportedly spent hundreds of hours working on the film elements supplied by NASA, rebalancing and improving color, contrast, clarity, and stability. As a result, even some of the trickiest archival footage, like the one from the actual landing on the Moon, now looks great.

What else is there to say about For All Mankind? As cliche as it may sound, it is impossible to grasp the true nature of the excitement, concerns and fears that were part of the atmosphere that surrounded the Apollo 11 mission if you have not seen it. Simple words can only go so far in describing what America and the rest of the world felt on July 20, 1969. The Apollo 11 mission was a monumental event the likes of which had not been witnessed before.

I have seen a number of great documentaries over the years, and I own copies of most of them in my library. If you asked, I could easily describe them to you, but I don't remember them vividly. I do For All Mankind. I know it like the palm of my hand, and I recall exactly how I felt when I first saw it because it made me dream impossible dreams. I hope that those of you that are about to see For All Mankind for the first time have a similar experience.

For All Mankind Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Al Reinert's For All Mankind arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion.

I like what the folks at Criterion have done here a lot. The transfer reveals solid detail, excellent color reproduction and strong clarity (when compared to the DVD transfer). More importantly, when blown through a digital projector, For All Mankind remains pleasingly stable. Furthermore, the Blu-ray transfer has enhanced the grain structure of the film quite nicely. As a result, the footage from the Moon looks absolutely fantastic. This being said, this is a newly restored, supervised and approved by the director, high-definition transfer of the film, which was created on a Spirit Datacine from a 35mm interpositive. All in all, I doubt it For All Mankind looked this good when it was first screened. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray disc. Therefore, unless you have a native Region-A or Region-Free player, you won't be able to playback it).

For All Mankind Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one audio track on this Blu-ray disc: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. For the record, Criterion have provided optional English HOH track for the main feature as well as optional intertitles identifying the voices of the men heard throughout the film.

As noted in the booklet offered with this release, the original Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack has been remastered at 24-bit from 35mm magnetic tracks. Clicks, thumps, hiss, and hum have been removed manually using Pro Tools HD. The result is a stable, notably clear and crisp audio data, which sounds terrific encoded as a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Brian Eno's atmospheric music score sounds excellent and there are no balance issues that I detected with it.

For All Mankind Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary - this archival audio commentary by filmmaker Al Reinert and astronaut Eugene Cernan was recorded exclusively for the Criterion Collection in 1999. A veteran of three missions, including Apollo 17, on which he served as commander, Cernan was the last to set foot on the lunar surface, in 1972.

• An Accidental Gift - Al Reinert mined NASA's film repository at the Johnson Space Center to create For All Mankind. This archival program explores his commitment and the materials used, with comments by Reinert; Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean; and NASA film editors Don Pickard and Chuck Welch, film vault curator Morris Williams and lead librarian Mike Gentry. (32 min).

• On Camera - for his film, Al Reinert chose to record audio-only interviews with the Apollo astronauts. Here Reinert presents a compilation of on-camera interviews with fifteen of the astronauts, excerpted from a few of his favorite films about the Apollo missions -- Jeff Roth's The Wonder of It All and Mickey Lemle's The Other Side of the Moon and Our Planet Earth -- as well as from two events honoring the fortieth anniversaries of Apollo 7 and Apollo 8. (21 min).

• Paintings From the Moon - Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean was the fourth man to walk on the moon, and he later commanded the Skylab 3 mission, staying a then record fifty-nine days in space. After retiring from NASA, he turned full-time to his other passion, painting. Presented here is a video introduction with Bean and a gallery of his paintings, each work accompanied by commentary from the painter himself. (8 min).

• NASA Audio Highlights - twenty-one sound bites, collected from the first ten years of the American space program. Clip number one if from Alan Shepard's historic first ride into space, and the last is Eugene Cernan's final words on the Moon during Apollo 17. (7 min).

• 3, 2, 1…Blast Off! - a collection of launch footage showing one example of each of NASA's five rocket boosters (the Mercury-Redstone, Mercury-Atlas, Gemini-Titan, Saturn 1B, and Saturn V), which were the launch vehicles for the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab missions. (3 min).

• Booklet - a 28-page illustrated booklet featuring Terrence Rafferty's essay "Fantastic Voyage" and Al Reinert's essay "A Trip To The Moon", as well as technical credits.

For All Mankind Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Simply put, Al Reinert's For All Mankind is one of the greatest documentaries ever made. Criterion's Blu-ray release contains a newly restored, supervised and approved by the director, transfer of the film. The disc also contains a good amount of supplemental features. Obviously, we Highly Recommend it.