First Man

After initially being a bit ambivalent about seeing First Man, I decided to give it a chance, mainly due to the goodwill held over from Damien Chazelle's first directorial effort, the excellent Whiplash. Apparently, Chazelle had been sitting on this Neil Armstrong story since before La La Land and got started after Josh Singer (Spotlight) handed over a script. And a pretty prosaic script it is. Thankfully avoiding the trap that many other biopics have fallen into, this shies away from the cradle to grave narrative and focuses on about 8 years of Armstrong's life, from 1961 to 1969. Trim the fat, this is the meat.

The main theme of First Man is obsessive drive and this is a watering hole Chazelle likes to return to, as there are obvious similarities to his previous two films. Armstrong's determination to get to the moon is, to an extent, explained by a tragedy that I won't go into here. Accurate or not, it adds a filmic poignancy that works depending on your level of acceptance. Perspective is another focal point. Armstrong, played slightly soporifically by Ryan Gosling, spends a lot of time peering at the moon through an old home film camera and the best looking shot in the film is a simple suburban street bathed in moonlight. This perspective is finally mirrored by Gozzle looking at Earth from the moon (spoiler!).

A couple of sequences in the rocket's cockpit get the old blood pumping and these are probably the best things about the film. Chazelle has a knack for raising tension. This side of the film is handled in an almost documentary style and it's left to the family and friends section to provide the heart, the grounding. Claire Foy, as Armstrong's wife, Janet, is as tense as Gozzle is laid-back and they actually work quite well together. Her ultimate emo-ruption is worth waiting for - "You're a bunch of boys making models out of balsa wood! You don't have anything under control!"

Justin Hurwitz's fine score helps to accompany the astronauts on their flight attempts and the recreations of the era are great, as you'd expect, but I just couldn't get fully on board the First Man rocket. 

See also:

Chazelle's debut, Whiplash (2014) is fantastic, exhausting, sweaty film making and, for a touch of NASA conspiracy, Peter Hyams' Capricorn One (1977). Mars, not the moon, but it's all space.

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