FIERCE PEOPLE is a movie that should be applauded for its ambition. If its execution isn’t perfect, it at least serves as an object lesson of the inherent difficulties in bringing a complex book to the screen.
Adopted by Dirk Wittenborn from his own novel, the film quite cleverly juxtaposes and compares the behavior of a primitive South American tribe called the FIERCE PEOPLE with the behavior of their supposedly more civilized cousins in ritzy, upscale New Jersey horse country of the 1970s.
At its center is 16-year-old Finn Earl, whose only real connection to his anthropologist father is through the documentaries Dad does about the Ishkanani people. However, his plans to spend the summer with dad are aborted when his drug addicted mom has a crisis the morning she is to accompany him to the Passport office. Finn has to run to the local “drug” store for her eight ball and is caught up in a sweep when the place is raided.
Apparently, the experience is enough to scare mom Liz (Diane Lane) straight. She calls an old friend, a rich man whose life she once saved, takes Finn and goes to his house for the summer. The man, Osborne (Donald Sutherland), is so wealthy he owns 10 square miles of the state, appointed his chauffeur as the local police chief. Everyone in the area is apparently beholden to Osborne.
We don’t pay enough attention to the space program anymore, unless there’s a disaster. But once upon a time, men dared dream that we’d walk on the moon.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON is an outstanding documentary that should not be missed. It is about the time between 1968 and 1972 when America sent nine space craft to the moon, but it is really about much more that. It is about that time in what now seems like ancient history when America, as one astronaut noted, still “made bold moves.”
It recreates the last time the rest of the world looked up to the United States, a time when we who lived here were all Americans, not hyphenates. It was a time of Norman Rockwell, Chevy trucks and apple pies left to cool on window sills. And Made in the USA – not imported into the USA -- was the gold standard.
We had a young president who told us that anything was possible. The Soviet Union was the first to launch a satellite (1957) and the first to launch a man into space (Yuri Gagarin in 1961). But in a speech to Congress shortly thereafter, John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
A lot happened to change the mood of the country. The assassination in Dallas, of course. Vietnam. But the space program mesmerized us and in fact the world. We sent several missions close to and around the moon. And then on July 16, 1969, NASA launched Apollo 11. Five days Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took one small step for a man but one large step for mankind.