First Man

Score:  A

Directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Kyle Chandler
Running time: 141 minutes
Rated PG-13

Long Story Short:  Damien Chazelle's follow up to La La Land is about Neil Armstrong - not just his famed moon landing, but also his personal life.  Gosling joins Chazelle again, and he's a great choice for the role, as is Claire Foy as his wife, Janet.  The film does a great job showing just how tough that mission to the moon was, on the ground as well as through a new, tangible sense of the perils of journeying to space.  By looking in on his home life, too, the film offers an intriguing take on how one man was pushed to legendary success as well as ordinary heartbreak.  Highly recommended.


In the early 1960s, Neil Armstrong (Gosling) is a struggling NASA test pilot.  He is going through deep personal turmoil as he watches his young daughter lose a battle with cancer.  However, he is accepted for Project Gemini - a crucial step for the ultimate goal of landing on the moon - and moves his wife and son with him to Houston.  There he befriends several peers, and they (and their families) help each other through an arduous journey as NASA seeks to make a breakthrough that will push the U.S. space program beyond the Soviets'.  Armstrong's skill and tenacity set him apart over the years, and he is named the commander of Apollo 11, the first lunar landing.  The designation is far from a victory lap for Armstrong, though: his continued grief is an unpredictable, double-edged sword, and regular close calls clearly show how thin a line exists between triumph and disaster in outer space.

First Man benefits from a strong, fairly small cast of men - plus one crucial woman's role.  Ryan Gosling was a clear choice for the role of Armstrong: not only did he work with director Chazelle on La La Land, he has proven his skill in quiet, introspective performances like this one.  He is also convincing as the driven, legendary astronaut, fully prepared and focused, though he can't help but laugh casually with his team members, too, a bit of the hotshot coming through.  It's actually his stoic father-husband role that is ultimately the weaker half.  He does a good job - perhaps too good a job - at realism here; his evolution is complex, but also frustratingly opaque and unresolved (like reality).  Claire Foy receives a substantial role as Janet Armstrong, and she does a great job with it.  While we don't get to see her personal ambitions, she fully inhabits a steely, perceptive, deeply compassionate wife and mother.  She shows this in even the briefest moments, but also gets to shine when storming to NASA HQ to check on her husband's status, and when powerfully forcing Neil to finally confront his deeply buried personal fears - and responsibility.  All other roles are purely supporting, though several help create a vivid personal and professional environment for Neil's story.  Of particular interest are Kyle Chandler's all-business yet caring NASA leader, Jason Clarke's friend-and-mentor Ed White, and Corey Stoll's amusingly socially-oblivious Buzz Aldrin.

First Man is a great biopic, one that makes the legendary lunar landing fresh with its focus on detailing the perils and struggles for Armstrong both personally and professionally.  While it is not as hyper-focused on a short period as similar masterpieces Lincoln and Selma, First Man wisely avoids using too broad a canvass to tell its story about Neil Armstrong.  The story begins with Neil near a breaking point, though he doesn't realize it, in both his NASA career and his home life: a key failed mission (following a string of disappointments), and a daughter whose illness resists all solutions.  This is the situation that launches him on a multi-year mission all the way to the moon, but the film does a great job to show that what is fueling him is also, like his rockets, dangerously unstable at times.  The film flows in a naturalistic way through its two-and-a-half hours, alternating focused, extended scenes (mostly Neil's NASA missions) with snippets, individually random but collectively filling in the portrait of a life (mostly his personal life, here).  It can be difficult to decipher the dialogue, often mumbled or sped through in this very non-staged style, but it's really the overall mood and direction of the drama that's important, so it's not a big deal.  The film's final, and one of its most poignant, scene has not a word uttered at all to emphasize that point.

The highlights to me were the NASA missions, which had me clinging to my seat: from the opening test flight gone wrong, to the first Gemini mission that seems a success (until it isn't), and even the famous Apollo 11 flight.  They are mostly filmed from inside the cramped vehicles with Neil, and you truly get the sense that he is riding buckets of bolts.  The camera itself shakes violently with the vessel, showing how helpless the passengers often are; metal creaks, groans and rattles ominously, straining to hold together against unbelievably powerful forces.  Crucial moments and circumstances on the mission are given great context by earlier moments on the ground, but not in an awkward way.  At times this is too much for the quieter, gentler home life scenes to compete with, but Foy does a great job to provide at least a few big impressions, as mentioned previously.  Finally, the journey is enriched by a great soundtrack whose repetitiveness but quiet urgency helps sustain that tone in the film; thankfully it does not succumb to cliched, triumphant swells.  Just making it through - whether on the ground at home or in the eerie quiet of outer space - is enough.

***

First Man is a great start to the season of Oscar hopeful film releases.  So many promising elements came together - Oscar-nominated director Chazelle reuniting with his lead actor from La La Land in Gosling, the biopic genre that has been so successful recently, etc.  But great promise is no guarantee of success, and the filmmakers deserve much credit for developing a focused, intriguing vision for the film as well as the actors for bringing it to life.  This only reinforces my interest in closely following great directors and their muses (when are your next films coming out, Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve??) and adds Chazelle to that list.  I recommend this for everyone.




By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57634807