Review of First Man (2018) by Bob K — 18 Dec 2018

5/5.

This film has largely dropped out of consideration as one of the best films of 2018, but I would place it on such a list. First Man accomplishes some amazing feats, like showing us rocket travel from perspectives we've never seen before. Forget about the Saturn V footage you've seen ad nauseum. It's all new here, and spectacular. Before you get there however, be prepared for incredible you-are-there scenes inside a jet cockpit to open the films, and a stomach wrenching sequence aboard Gemini 8, the mission that demonstrated docking in orbit, but also very nearly ended in disaster, spinning out of control. Apollo 11's descent to the moon was also masterful. It evoked a sense of alien landscape as good as any science fiction film.

The movie is about the buttoned up Neil Armstrong and the less detached Janet Armstrong, and how he coped with incredible stresses involving not only his own flights, but unfolding disasters around him. He did it with professionalism and steady nerves, but part of the movie is trying to catch when his emotions are really visible and even a bit unbridled. It doesn't happen much. I knew about the Apollo 1 plugs-out test fire, but not about his daughter, and some of the other astronaut deaths. They didn't die as a result of the space program. The incredible isolation of walking on the moom for the first time, startling and shocking beyond anything Columbus ever felt. I was very moved.

A caveat, that I have no idea how much of this movie was true, outside the well-known historical incidents. That doesn't matter, and it never does, for a movie. I don't know if Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy were anything like their characters, or if their marriage and parenting were accurately depicted. I don't care. It was beautiful. Damien Chazelle has directed this film, La La Land, and Whiplash, also writing the last two. I'll be anxiously awaiting his next project.