First
Man **** / *****
Directed
by: Damien
Chazelle.
Written
by: Josh
Singer based on the book by James R. Hansen.
Starring:
Ryan
Gosling (Neil Armstrong), Claire Foy (Janet Shearon), Jason Clarke (Ed White), Kyle
Chandler (Deke Slayton), Corey Stoll (Buzz Aldrin), Christopher Abbott (David
Scott), Patrick Fugit (Elliot See), Lukas Haas (Michael Collins), Shea Whigham
(Gus Grissom), Brian d'Arcy James (Joseph A. Walker), Pablo Schreiber (Jim
Lovell), Cory Michael Smith (Roger B. Chaffee), J. D. Evermore (Christopher C.
Kraft Jr.), John David Whalen (John Glenn),Ethan Embry (Pete Conrad), Skyler
Bible (Richard F. Gordon Jr.), Ben Owen (John Hodge), Olivia Hamilton (Patricia
White), Kris Swanberg (Marilyn See), CiarĂ¡n Hinds (Robert R. Gilruth).

Chazelle casts his La La Land
star Ryan Gosling as Armstrong, and it’s an interesting choice. You’d be hard
pressed to find a more naturally charming actor than Gosling working today, but
in First Man he has to repress all that charm, force it down deep inside. This
is a very interior performance from Gosling (he has done this before, most
notably in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive – which he was brilliant in, and he
tried in Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives, in which he was not). Much is made
early in the film about his 2-year-old daughter’s death due to cancer – and
although he barely mentions her again, her death hangs over much of the rest of
the movie (and gives the films its emotional climax late – the one moment the
movie seems to take historical liberties with). He will have to attend many
funerals over the course of the film – and they all bring him back to his
daughters. But he never knows what to say in them – or really, at other times,
to people. The movie’s hidden subject matter is this kind of portrait of stoic
masculinity, which I miss it examined a little more (like say, American Sniper
did) – instead of just presenting it as the norm. Pretty much everyone at NASA
behaves the same way – not to the extreme as Armstrong – but basically. This
makes them all kind of blend together – with really only Jason Clarke, as Ed
White and Corey Stoll as Buzz Aldrin, standing out in any sort of meaningful
way.
On the home front, Claire Foy is
saddled with the unenviable role of “supportive, but worrying wife”. This is
actually one of the areas I was dreading a little – seriously, there is little
that is duller, or more retrograde, than the worrying wife at home – but Foy and
screenwriter Josh Singer, bring more nuance to the role than I expected. It
almost presents her job as being more difficult – she is stuck at home,
listening to a box, to find out what her husband is going through. She has no
control, no power – and no escape from her own grief, that Armstrong does. She
also does a lot of emotional heavy lifting, because Armstrong refuses to – when
she blows up at him, a scene that we often see in these movies, and often feels
false, here it rings true – he is acting like an asshole, and her reaction
makes sense. It’s not a nagging wife role, but something deeper.
Still, you can tell that what
drew Chazelle to this movie was the flight sequences themselves. He crams us
into those ships and capsules right alongside the men, showing us their limited
view out of windows, when in reality they spend most of their time staring at
buttons and levers and switches to try not to die. The scenes of takeoffs are
almost unbearably loud and visceral – Chazelle uses the shaky camera work I
normally do not like, to great effect here to place us there. Everything is so
loud and so chaotic, that when we finally get to the moon, Chazelle makes the
daring, but brilliant, choice to drop out all sound for a while on two
occasions. It’s a beautiful touch – and the perfect way to end this film that
was so often not about the beauty of space travel, finally finding those
fleeting moments of piece.
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