OK Boomer
Sometimes it can be hard for those of us born after the Baby Boom generation to understand the sense of possibility that existed for them in their youth. I felt like the closest I've come to getting a taste of that in a long time is watching Linklater's Apollo 10 1/2, a charming fantasia about growing up in a time of expansion and optimism.
Linklater returns to his rotoscoping animation he used in his films A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life to create an unreal feeling flashback to a time when he could believe he could walk on the moon. Apollo 10 1/2 is the story of a boy who becomes an astronaut, or perhaps the story of a boy day dreaming himself to the moon. Along the way we get glimpses into his suburban life in a time when the suburbs offered promise and everything was shiny and new.
I think what brought me into his tale was just how appreciative it felt to have been able to experience that. For people like me, born later and lived through times which were far more cynical, sometimes these stories can feel remote, and unreal. But Apollo 10 1/2 has a sweet earnestness to it which engenders the story, and perhaps presents it as something lost.
Apollo 10 1/2 isn't necessarily the story of a nation. While the film hints at the civil unrest happening as American awoke from the 50s utopian mirage to understand better just how limited that dream was, instead the film focuses on just the experience of this boy and his dream in white suburbia. The animation helps frame it as what it is, fantasy, nostalgia, a remembrance that is neither true not entirely false. Its beauty is in its sweet naiveté. And the desire to hold on to a feeling, even just for a moment.
Apollo 10 1/2
Starring: Jack Black, Glen Powell, Zachary Levi
Writer/Director: Richard Linklater
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