First Man
Damien Chazelle may very well be the most technically audacious filmmaker working today. The way he shoots and cuts his films, the way he uses sound and music, is kind of astonishing to witness, even if the film itself doesn’t quite have the impact emotionally it’s intended. His last two films, “Whiplash” and “La La Land,” were about musical talents getting humbled by gatekeepers who wanted to make them earn it. With “First Man,” he takes on a real-life hero whose accomplishment is one of the most significant in human history, but it may not even be the most important think he was able to do in his life. “First Man” continues Chazelle’s technical genius as a storytelling, but is almost emotionally empty to watch unfold.
The screenplay by Josh Singer is based on the biography by James R. Hansen, and starts with an early test flight by Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) as he is breaking through the Earth’s atmosphere. The intensity and intimacy of Chazelle’s approach to Armstrong’s life in the sky is established in this early scene, as he puts us in the cockpit with Neil, and his use of sound effects, and a ferocious score by Justin Hurwitz, make us feel every ounce of danger Armstrong is putting himself in as he eventually makes his way onto the Gemini team that will lead into NASA’s Apollo missions, and his eventual landing on the moon with Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll) on Apollo 11. While his time as a pilot offers the structure of the film, though, a healthy amount of meat on the film’s bones comes from his home life with his wife Janet (Claire Foy) and their children, as he finds having a normal life difficult when he’s doing the work he’s doing in the sky.
The drama at the Armstrong household is intended to be as tense as it is when Neil is making his way to the moon, and I don’t doubt that the narrative is accurate to Armstrong’s stoicism in real life, but the domestic scenes in “First Man” don’t have nearly the emotional weight as when Armstrong is doing flights and preparations at NASA. The way Gosling plays Armstrong, he is very guarded about his feelings, especially when it comes to the death of their daughter, Karen, of cancer, and it’s difficult to get a read on whether he’s just supposed to be so buried into his work that his family comes second, or if he’s using his work to run from his emotional pain. Chazelle’s telling of the story makes you think it’s the latter, but neither makes you really care about those scenes, and that’s a problem, and not just for the film in general. It also strands Foy as his wife, who has to do the emotional heavy-lifting on her own, and while she is terrific in the film, the imbalance between the two actors is hard to really get your heart around emotionally, although it does make a late scene, as he is preparing to leave for the Apollo 11 mission, work quite well when she’s trying to get him to talk to their sons, and explain to them how he may not come home. It’s a moment directly correlated to the pain that is felt after the tragedy of Apollo 1, when three astronauts lost their lives during an inspection when bad wiring caused an explosion, and it’s the most affecting moment in the film on Earth.
When the film centers in on Neil Armstrong and NASA’s attempts to beat Russia to the moon, “First Man” is at its most confident, and brilliant. Chazelle’s technical skills as a director are in full-force in these scenes, and the way he puts us right in the middle of Armstrong’s experience of these moments is where “First Man” finds its driving force, and emotional charge. It’s weird watching the sequence of events leading up to the Apollo 11 expedition after so many years of watching “Apollo 13,” but the way Chazelle puts us in the capsule with Neil and Buzz, and how he films the tense landing, is one of the most thrilling images of 2018. I would almost buy this movie just to experience that sequence, as well as the others earlier in the film, alone. It’s just a damn shame that “First Man,” while effective in getting us into the head of Neil Armstrong, doesn’t seem to have a grasp on his heart. That would have made the film the masterpiece Chazelle clearly aims for with every movie.
