New Release Review: First Man

First Man

(2018. Director: Damien Chazelle Starring: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Jason Clarke)

SYNOPSIS:

Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), an X-15 test pilot switches careers to become the first civilian NASA astronaut. We follow his life through various trials and struggles leading up to that fateful mission to put a man on the moon.

The Moon landing was a miracle. It's oddly easy to forget that these days. For the generations born after the event, it's simply an accepted fact that man has walked on the moon. It's taught in our schools and it's often featured, even joked about, in our pop culture. It's become weirdly mundane. However, sometimes, when the moment takes you, you can find yourself staring up at that strange white disc in the sky. You realise just how far away it is from us, both in simple physical distance and in the sheer scale of effort it would take to not only power ourselves beyond the clutching gravity and protective atmosphere of our Earth but to voyage out deep into the unknowable darkness. As that terror takes hold, you remember that people have had that exact same thought long before we were even able to put satellites in our orbit. Instead of being frozen in existential dread at the sheer scale of it all, they decided to make that journey. And then they did. They walked on the goddamned moon! And it blows your fucking mind.

With his latest film, First Man, director Damien Chazelle wants to take you on that journey. From it's opening seconds inside the cockpit of an X-15 jet which starts to drift dangerously far from the Earth's grasp, the journey is thrilling. Most films set in space spend a lot of time on the majesty of the impossibly wide universe and the noble power of the human desire to explore it. First Man is not one of those films. There are no shots of astronauts marching in slow motion to an anthemic fanfare. Instead we see them as studious engineers committed to doing their jobs despite the treacherous circumstances. There are no wide exterior shots of space modules elegantly dancing through the inky blackness. Instead we are put entirely within those claustrophobic capsules, feeling their  terrifying smallness and their rickety fragility. We're shaken by every unexpected alarm, every dial spinning out of control and every time the camera jolts our equilibrium off kilter to remind us that we are beyond the realm of physics which we fully understand, let alone have control over. Where many films about the space race focus entirely on the heroic bravery of those who risked their lives to further human endeavour, First Man is more interested in the utter insanity of locking people up inside tiny, bolted together tin cans and launching them thousands of metres straight upwards at multiple times the speed of sound.

This is a film which never forgets the cost of such ambition. Danger is a constant backdrop to our characters' journeys. This is not just during those stunning voyages out into the unknown but also during the everyday practice runs and tests leading up to those missions (an early sequence showing the newly recruited astronauts being locked inside a spinning gyroscope and challenged to control its rotations before they pass out is sure to lead to a few queasy stomachs in the audience.) The spectre of death is never far away either. In one hauntingly telling scene, when Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) returns to his family after being called to his door to receive bad news, his wife Janet (Claire Foy) doesn't bother to ask him what has happened, merely whose funeral they will be preparing to attend this time. And it's not just lives lost that we are reminded of, but also life lost. The film is edited unusually, jumping forward stretches of time without warning or explanation. It's not surprising for us to see Neil leaving for work one morning and then returning to a different looking home with older children. Everything beyond the mission at hand is simply missing, subtly revealing the damage being done to this family from the viewpoint of the man so obliviously doing it. The political atmosphere isn't sugarcoated either. The top brass at NASA appear to be keen to overtake Soviet achievements out of arrogant nationalism at least as much as from any desire to advance humanity's horizons. Although we do eventually catch a glimpse of the wonderment felt around the world at the moon landing itself, prior scenes show the anger of the American public at the amount of tax dollars being fed to NASA from a country still struggling to find it's identity after being upended by the disastrous war in Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination and the ongoing struggles of the civil rights movement. (Gil Scott-Heron's brutally sardonic poem 'Whitey's On The Moon' even gets a full airing at one point.) 

This air of cold pessimism which haunts most of the film's runtime makes its final sequences all the more powerful. Most of the film is shot in muted tones and a mix of 16mm and 35mm film which gives it a grainy, gritty look reminiscent of a documentary, which is fitting to the emotional remove it has during these scenes. Justin Hurwitz's score also displays surprising range. Much of the music is minimalist, offering no melody or comfort, merely an aggressive pulse that only increases the threatening machine noise of these spartan spacecraft being battered by the elements. In one docking sequence it briefly flirts with a waltz surely designed to remind us of that iconic moment in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it's short-lived and appears to be there to act as contrast to the bluntly uncomfortable scene that follows as things don't go to plan. (Older science fiction films get a musical reference too through prominent use of the old sci-fi staple, the theremin. However, it is still restrained into a quiet motif of loneliness and lost love.)

After nearly two hours of this  austerity, the scenes of the Apollo 11 launch are stunning. The film switches to full IMAX; the rocket is revealed in bold primary colours and, as it ignites in a searing burst of flame and noise, the score finally bursts free with soaring strings. From a film so quietly fascinated with the minutiae required to prepare for space travel, it's heartstoppingly thrilling when it finally decides to go big. And that's before we even reach the moon itself.

Damien Chazelle continues to impress. At only 33 years old and only four films into his career, he is already showing both an impressive range and a distinct voice of his own. He made an impression with his first film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, scored a beloved cult hit with Whiplash and became the youngest ever Best Director Oscar winner with La La Land. First Man widens his grasp even further. Gone are the sweeping camera moves which brought fluid grace to his earlier work, replaced by tight frames and staccato movements. Still there though is his central theme of a man forced to choose between his obsession with some form of glory and his relationships with others. This conceit is not unique to Chazelle and it's a popular story for young ambitious directors to relate to. However, where Darren Aronofsky's leads are typically destroyed both physically and mentally by their compulsions and Christopher Nolan changes his mind on whether the goals are worthy of the price with each project, Chazelle's endings continue to remain ambiguous. This has sometimes led to accusations of sexism in his work, particularly the way his female characters are framed as if they are merely obstacles that his 'great men' must overcome as part of their journeys. (Some particularly witty commenters online even suggested that the title First Man may have been missing a comma in between its words.) This criticism is not entirely inaccurate but it's not a full picture of the relationship at the centre of First Man. There is more to Janet Armstrong as a character than the stereotypical 'nagging wife' role. She acts as a surrogate for the audience, giving us a glimpse of the man her husband once was before tragedy launched him on his closed-off solo trajectory. Also, as the only character allowed to openly emote, she offers some respite from the film's chilly professionalism. Claire Foy does great work with what she is given but the film's biggest weakness is how underwritten she remains and it's hard not to think how much more effective the film could have been if it spent just a little more time with her and allowed us to see more of the what has been lost to these painful silences.

In real life, Neil Armstrong was a quiet, humble man who often preferred to keep this thoughts and feelings to himself so it's hard to think of an actor better suited to the role than Ryan Gosling. It's become an easy joke to mock Gosling's famously taciturn performances in the likes of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive and Only God Forgives, but, as last years masterful Blade Runner 2049 has proven, he has an unmatched ability to convey the roiling anger, pain and vulnerablilty of men who are desperately trying to repress every feeling they fear having, deep down where they hope no-one can see. He turns in another of those roles here. His Neil Armstrong is a man whose drive stems from his need to keep moving forward if only to prevent himself from ever being able to grieve. It's a masterfully layered performance. At times he feels like an audience alienating cypher, miles away from, say, Tom Hank's loveable version of Jim Lovell in Apollo 13. However, once the film reaches its inevitable climax, it becomes clear, at this final zenith point, Neil simply has nowhere else to go and nowhere to hide from himself. These final scenes are simultaneously triumphant and devastating and reveal that the film's most difficult journey is not one of physical space but of emotional distance. Armstrong spends the film doing everything he can to get away from the world, both literally and metaphorically. It's only after he actually succeeds and embraces that magnificent desolation (as Buzz Aldrin famously named it) that he is truly able to come home again.

First Man is a powerful piece of work. For those seeking merely a celebration of the magic of space travel, they'd probably be better served by The Right Stuff or Apollo 13. This film instead offers a fascinating character piece about a man who finds himself travelling further inward as he journeys further outward. It's a timely reminder of the difficulty of every single one of those small steps required of those men (or women) which lead to the giant leaps for mankind.    

Review by The Mogul