It’s been almost fifty years since the culmination of a
spacebound rivalry of nations that, starting with Sputnik in the 1950s, also saw
the inspiration for a resurgence of space-searching cinema that ranged from the
artful 2001 to variations on Attack of The Half-Assed Effects. Films that
focused on the space programs themselves have also came over the years, from
the tense drama of Apollo 13, to the nitty-gritty of The Right Stuff, and more
recently explorations on other aspects of these undertakings like Hidden
Figures. And that finally brings us to the most recent biopic to go this way,
Damien Chazelle’s First Man.
The focus is on lunar pioneer Neil Armstrong, here played by
Ryan Gosling. The title’s ambiguous enough that you could also wonder why it’s not
about Yuri Gagarin but whatever. The film is also billed as best watched in
Imax, and while I didn’t see that version on account of not having a bottomless
bank balance, I can say that the opening scene did make me understand why.
Immediately the film launches into a spectacular sequence of an early 60s test
flight that goes from the upper atmosphere to skimming the treetops. There I
decided that Chazelle sure as hell has the chops to convey the stomach
churning, brain-spinning, visuals-overloading sensations that come with telling
gravity to go fuck itself.
Pity that the human side of things is more…mixed.
Ryan Gosling’s performance isn’t what sells the movie, let’s
get that out of the way. Neil Armstrong was a fairly taciturn individual by
most accounts in real life, but Gosling makes him come across as far too aloof
and detached to be truly likeable. A lot of the film focuses on Armstrong’s
drama with his family and how the continuing death toll of the space program
affects this, but it never feels truly resolved. There’s certainly some
touching moments, like the real-life instance of Armstrong dropping his
deceased daughter’s bracelet into a lunar crater, but for the most part,
Gosling seems stuck in still playing his replicant role from Blade Runner 2049.
The rest of the cast is alright. Corey Stoll gives a decent
turn as Buzz Aldrin but there’s not a massive amount of focus on him. Jason
Clarke, who continues to look like Quentin Tarantino, plays Ed White, the
unfortunately fated pilot for the Apollo 1 mission that also lends itself to
another effective scene of the film. The best of the cast is probably Claire
Foy as Jaine Shearan, Armstrong’s wife, who certainly gives her all but as
before the payoff isn’t quite there.
But despite all this, the spacebound scenes are still nicely
enjoyable. The Gemini mission captures the claustrophobia of being crammed into
the early tin cans they shot up into space perfectly, and easily matches
Gravity for low-orbital drama as things inevitably go wrong and astronauts have
to fight physics itself just to stay alive. And then, finally, we get to the
Apollo 11 launch and mission itself. I’m sure they simply used the actual
footage of a Statue of Liberty-sized Saturn 5 rocket lifting off since that’s
always been inspiring all just by itself. The lunar landscape shots all too
aptly highlight the isolation yet wondrous nature of simply being on an
unearthly surface, and though we all know how it happened, there’s still
something inspiring about finally seeing a man press his footprint onto alien
dust.
Ultimately, First Man is probably a nice treat for NASA
aficionados and the spacecraft-set sequences are done great—but despite billing
itself as a human story, it doesn’t really succeed there. Gosling has a couple
of moments but many viewers will probably just find him dull in this one. Perhaps
it’s despite that I still felt some inspiration from the story of the whole world
banding together to see a milestone in human exploration—and why, despite many
films concerning the next steps to Mars, it can be disappointing that truth
never really caught up to fiction in the half-century since then.
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