Review of First Man (2018) by Wayne M — 16 Oct 2018

I'm officially done with handheld camerawork. I don't care if Damien Chazelle is using it to stylistically compare the instability of Earthly life to the clarity gained by achieving greatness on the moon. Sure, a rocket launch sequence warrants it, but a funeral scene? No thanks. It sucks to look at, and it sucks even worse to look at in IMAX. Even Claire Foy's last major motion picture appearance, shot on iPhones mind you, had stable camera work for the most part. It should be a crime to film the majority of a movie in 70mm without stabilizers or tripods. I digress.

Other than that, this is one of the most perfunctory historical dramas of the last few years. As someone who loved Whiplash and could respect La La Land for what it was, First Man left me cold and nonplussed, easily proving the least entertaining of my quadruple feature today. The Goose is in full stoic mode here which makes for some great 1950's fatherly brusqueness, and placed in dynamic contrast is Foy's nuclear housewife, a chance for her to really dig into the antiquated ideals of a bygone era of femininity.

However, even though Chazelle didn't write this one, he still can't manage to grasp onto what makes a strong female characterization tick, and the emotional anchor of the Armstrongs' daughter passing away is about the only thing that colors Neil as anything more than the all-American egg-head space cadet he is. It's a movie that makes even the overwhelming pile of corpses that NASA climbed all the way up to the moon seem blasé. For the heroism that much of the marketing has espoused, it makes the golden era of space exploration appear clinical and nearly incompetent. Maybe that's secretly the point. Hey Damien, stick to jazz, dude.