"I Aim at the Stars" is a very problematic film. On one hand, Dr. Wernher von Braun was instrumental in the American space program. But on the other, his Nazi past was whitewashed and this film ignored the awful war crimes this man perpetrated during WWII. While head of the German rocket program, its leader, von Braun, was responsible for using slave laborers to build his research station at Peenemünde, Germany. And, in total, about 20,000-25,000 of these slave laborers were worked to death to make von Braun's dream come true! He also was NOT the apolitical guy you see in the story, but was a card-carrying and eager member of the National Socialist Party as well as a member of the SS! The man was a monster...and you get none of this in the movie which is intended to glorify his life. Now I am not saying they shouldn't have done a movie about him...but at least it should have been a more honest one.
The film begins well after WWII had begun. While it showed von Braun and his comrades working on the V-2 rocket, there isn't much apart from that and you learn little about the man's personal life. Then, as the war ended, von Braun and many of his fellow rocket scientists defected to the USA and the film then follows them to New Mexico and their work on the US space program. It ends with the first US satellite in space.
I think about 80-90% of the film is good. Jurgens is good as von Braun and the story is reasonably good despite its HUGE omissions. In other words, technically it's well made but also, as I mentioned above, it's pretty sad what is omitted. It's worth seeing but only if you read up on the man and don't take the entire film as a thorough biography of the man.
