Director
Damien Chazelle
(LA LA LAND)

Stars
Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler and Corey Stoll

The latest offering from Damien Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash) is a far stretch from the musically themed films we’re used to seeing from the Academy Award winning director. Instead he delivers a uniquely immersive look into one of the most publicised events in modern history, the first moon landing. Re-uniting with Ryan Gosling (who plays Neil Armstrong), First Man isn’t an ordinary blockbuster biopic. Chazelle challenges his audience in this polarising close up into the man at the forefront of one of mankind’s greatest achievements.

The opening scene of First Man sets the tone for what will be a confronting journey to the moon. We first meet Armstrong in 1961 where he is working as a test pilot flying hypersonic rocket-powered X-15 aircrafts. Chazelle’s use of extreme close-ups and unsteady camera work to depict the frenetic nature of Armstrong’s work is both captivating and nauseating. It immerses you into the experience, but makes you wonder if that’s an experience you really want to ‘feel’.  This is a common approach throughout the film and one that felt a little tiresome at times. From this point we are introduced to Armstrong’s family get to understand aspects of Armstrong’s character that are both incredibly vulnerable and emotionally raw, to almost dissociative. He’s a complex man who is at times a flawed hero, but that glimpse, whilst considerably bleak, is also entirely refreshing. We know pretty early that this isn’t just a film to celebrate an icon, but a stripped back exploration into the discipline he felt was necessary to achieve what he did.

The film travels from 1961, through the Gemini and Apollo programs of the 1960’s and obviously the main event of the Apollo 11 mission of 1969. We see Armstrong’s challenges and devastation at losing a number of colleagues along the journey and touch on the distant relationship between Armstrong and his family, particularly with his wife (played by Claire Foy). It was this aspect of the film that I found most intriguing; the coolness between Neil and Janet Armstrong and the inability for Neil to open himself up to the people he cared most about.

Elements of the film have already divided opinions following the premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August. The decision by Chazelle and writer Josh Singer to not include the iconic moment where Armstrong planted the US flag into the moon’s surface has been seen by some as a political statement. The President himself has declared that he won’t see the film because of this, although I’m not sure how much weight his lofty opinion holds in any realm. Chazelle has publicly stated however that it wasn’t a decision derived from a lack of patriotism, but rather reinforcement that this is a focus on the man, not the mission. He did however state that he wanted the audience to be aware that not everyone was supportive of the funding that was being put into NASA from the US government, which was highlighted in a scene which showed a group of black American’s protesting that they live in a state of poverty while the NASA programs have billions of dollars funnelled into them. I thought this was a very bold and credible move by Chazelle to show that with many triumphs come great tragedies.

Overall, Chazelle’s story telling choices were a stroke of genius; however the stylistic choices are much more divisive. I have no doubt that some people will love the immersive approach and extreme close ups, but on a 23m x 32m IMAX screen, it was a little too much for this cinephile.  Even though the film was shot for IMAX, the graininess of the film (which admittedly did add to the feel of the time period) made it feel cheap, when it should have felt colossal. There were a number of scenes where I had to look away from the screen as at jerkiness was nauseating. The sound however was quite incredible and gave an amazing sense of realness.

When weighing up the good and bad of it all, there is definitely more in the good column. Ryan Gosling was brilliant in a role where he didn’t rely on his effortless charm.  Chazelle was once again ground-breaking, even if not to my individual taste at times. This isn’t a film going through the motions, although the motions will likely get you going (potentially into a sick bag). Whether you love it or hate it, First Man is a film you won’t regret investing the time into.

Stars 3.5

Moviedoc thanks Universal Pictures for the invite to the screening of this film.

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