“[Space Exploration] allows us to see things that maybe we should’ve seen a long time ago.”
First Man is the latest film from Oscar winning director Damien Chazelle, a biopic following astronaut Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) as he trains and prepares to embark on the United States’ ambitious mission to navigate space and visit the moon in the 1960s, while also dealing with the trauma surrounding his personal life.
First Man is not only a dramatized look at the behind the scenes development of the moon landing, but also a character study of the people involved, namely Neil Armstrong. In the film, we find that Armstrong is driven to this monumental achievement not only through a lifelong interest in flight and science, but also by the grief that has come to engulf his life. Armstrong’s continued determination in the face of dealing with profound and continuous loss examines how people respond to trauma and continue to operate in its wake. In addition to the numerous deaths of Armstrong’s colleagues as they trained and prepared for space travel, Armstrong is also left to process the death of his young daughter as he attempted to embark where no man had before. This constant barrage of loss only stood to make Armstrong more stoic and withdrawn from his friends and family amidst the professional pressure he was under. Some people use work as a means to distract themselves from their pain and Armstrong clearly chooses this path while also intending to finish the work of his deceased colleagues as a way to honor them. The ultimate achievement may seem worth the choice that Armstrong made to throw himself into his work, but the effect on his family for that period makes it clear that while there’s nothing wrong with holding onto grief, it is important to make room for other things too.
From the film’s opening scene, the tense backdrop onto which Chazelle has painted his vision is made clear. The perilousness of the moon mission is immediately presented to viewers with Armstrong embarking on a trip into the Earth’s atmosphere that goes wrong when he bounces off of it and continues to rise into space instead of descending back to the ground. This scene is where the visual style that is integral to the experience of First Man is first introduced as well, complete with the shaky cam, close-up visuals and highlighted shots of the 1960s rudimentary technology that seems so outdated now but was all that these space explorers had to depend on as they sought to make extraordinary leaps in human achievement. With this scene, and later many others, the single thread upon which everything hung is made to feel so real and so close that Armstrong’s brush with death and disaster almost becomes the viewers’ reality as well.
The intense, up-close nature of the camera work utilized in First Man fully encapsulates the rigors of training for space exploration, and provides viewers with a complete sense of immersion. The intimacy on display through the lens that at times takes us right into the faces of the characters results in an intimacy between viewers and the film itself. You feel as if you are walking side-by-side with Armstrong and his fellow astronauts whether they be in training, flight, or the navigation of their personal lives. As Janet Armstrong worriedly listens to Neil’s testing dock mission on the radio, you feel as if you sit right next to her in their living room, anxiously awaiting the results and his safe return to Earth. The closeness provided by Chazelle’s direction and director of photography Linus Sandgren transforms a historical moment from something that many of us have only read or about or seen on television into something we can feel like, if only for a fictional moment, we were a part of. It’s a melding of the magic of two separate wonders; the wonder of film-making, and the wonder of outer space. In a culture that increasingly seems to shun science and view space exploration as the purview of independent billionaires, First Man seeks to reawaken the sense of awe at humanity’s ability to reach the stars and bring a bit of their shine back to Earth for all to share.
Ryan Gosling gives an intense, stoic performance as an accomplished man seeking to reach his ultimate goal not just for his own satisfaction and sense of accomplishment, but as a way to deal with his own feelings of grief and loss; both in order to honor his fallen peers who never got the opportunity to reach the summit alongside him, and to finally come to terms with the loss of his daughter. Gosling also achieves the tall task of believably portraying a famous person as a famous figure himself. As the movie gets going and the story unfolds, you forget that you’re watching Gosling as Armstrong and just become engulfed in watching his life unfold and the work toward reaching the moon become accomplished. Claire Foy is also compelling as his wife Janet, at once the strong housewife holding it all together and a concerned, frustrated partner that demands more from a husband whose unaddressed trauma threatens his relationship with his family. While controlling what you share with others is a recommended tactic for working while grieving, the pendulum can swing too far and does so for Armstrong whose stoicism slowly corrodes his marriage and performance as a father. Foy capably maneuvers her way through the emotional spectrum experienced by Janet in these trying times, culminating with her impassioned confrontation of the emotionally closed off Armstrong just before he leaves the planet. The emotionally tense acting display is sure to be the scene that is played as her name is announced as a Best Supporting Actress nominee should she be bestowed that honor. Corey Stoll’s portrayal of the flippant and blunt Buzz Aldrin feels as true to life as any of the portrayals in the film and provides First Man with a little touch of levity in what is a majorly serious film. Stoll maximizes the screen time he is given and provides another notable performance to add to his resume.
I would be remiss if I didn’t dedicate a full paragraph to First Man‘s director Damien Chazelle. The 33 year-old film-making prodigy has only directed four films in total with three of those films seeing major wide releases, but after leaving the theater having finished First Man, I was struck that the thought that he may be the best working director in the business (yes, possibly even above the vaunted Christopher Nolan). The three films for which he’s most well-known and which brought him his fame, Whiplash, La La Land, and now First Man, all feel and look so different from each other. All are unified by the common thread of portraying characters who are big dreamers that sacrifice and endure much turmoil to reach their dreams, but the dissimilar visual styles and versatility in which they are directed make Chazelle and his directorial skill and aptitude particularly notable. Chazelle also used no green screen in capturing the work of the space program, instead opting for practical sets and shots of space projected onto LED screens. That the film remains a technical marvel, creating perhaps the most realistic depiction of the moon’s surface ever captured on film despite the old school approach to the visual effects is another notch in the young director’s belt. First Man is the second straight Damien Chazelle film that, while I did not leave the theater thinking I had watched the best film of the year, I did leave thinking that I might have just seen the best directed film of the year. For someone as young as Chazelle who is just beginning his (hopefully) long career in Hollywood to consistently reach this heights with his creative output, not just as director but also as the writer of these films, is remarkable and worth celebrating now.
Image: Universal Pictures
