Unless you believe that NASA’s moon landing was staged in an aircraft hangar in Arizona, First Man will deliver an enthralling story of human achievement and one man’s struggle with personal trauma.
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The First Man is Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), the first man to leave his footsteps in moon dust for infinity, thereby leaving his mark in the annals of human achievement.
This all sounds grand and heroic, but First Man is more than this. It doesn’t set out to dispel the myth but rather to convey a sense of the man behind the headlines and the fame that accompanied him after his walk on the moon.
The film begins with Armstrong flying experimental aircraft for NASA and follows his trajectory from his acceptance as a pilot/engineer in the Gemini space program until he is chosen as commander of the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon.
A personal family tragedy early in his career leaves an impact on his ability to express his emotions, which is as indelible on his psyche as the footprint he leaves on the moon.
This affects his connection with his wife, Janet, and their two sons. He is loving and caring but insular. He displays his emotions with all the feeling of a block of concrete.
His silent and reserved demeanour, however, is invaluable when he finds himself in a space capsule being shaken by the propulsive drive of a rocket and the forces of space.
Director Damien Chazelle’s style of film making places us in the claustrophobic environment of space capsules, tiny when compared to the enormous explosive firecracker on which they placed in order to launch them into the edges of Earth’s atmosphere and eventually beyond the confines of Earth to our nearest neighbour, the moon.
You will almost experience vertigo and motion sickness as Chazelle places you in the astronaut’s seat.
Chazelle also nods respectfully to previous films such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff through images and sequences that owe their style and substance to those earlier films.
While 2001 delves into the transcendental nature of existence, First Man burrows into a story about a man who is motivated by a desire to benefit humanity by undertaking dangerous and life threatening trials in the belief it will benefit all humans.
The examination of Armstrong’s life transcends the American experience to apply widely into the human mind.
First Man is a film about humans reaching for outer space while also being a journey into one man’s headspace.
