Directed By: Ivan Galin
Starring: August Schellenberg
Tag line: "After decades of rivalry, the world's two greatest powers have discovered the value of friendship"
Trivia: For this movie, Imax trained eight astronauts to operate the IMAX camera, with each astronaut receiving a total of 25 hours of training
I grew up in the 1980’s, when the very notion that the United States and Russia would work together on anything was too ridiculous for words. By that point, the two countries had been natural enemies for decades, fighting a Cold War against one another that seemed to have no end in sight. Then the world changed, and these two super powers started to trust one another again. Mission to Mir, a 1997 IMAX-produced documentary, takes us aboard the Space station Mir (which is Russian for “peace”) to show us what’s possible when people who were once adversaries suddenly become friends.
Mission to Mir follows American astronaut Shannon Lucid during her record-breaking stay on the Mir Station, a place she called home for 188 days (from March 22 to Sept. 26, 1996). Working closely with her Russian peers (both of whom are named “Yuri”), she performs a number of experiments, all designed to help us better understand how man might react to an extended stay in outer space. In addition, Mission to Mir gives us a brief historical rundown on both the Russian and U.S. space programs, with clips of Yuri Gagarin’s orbit of the earth as well as the U.S. moon landing, Now, after years of working against one another, each nation is relying on the other to help mankind learn a bit more about the cosmos.
Like many of the IMAX space documentaries, Mission to Mir features impressive imagery (a brief shot of the station in orbit high above the earth is simply astounding). But the visuals you’ll remember after seeing this movie are of a more earth-bound nature, such as watching kids sled down a hill in Star City, Russia, where many a Cosmonaut resides. Thirty years ago, a simple scene like this would have been labeled “classified”, and the fact that we can see it now is a testament to how far the two countries have progressed.
And it’s this spirit of togetherness that Mission to Mir captures so wonderfully.
