First Man
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Corey Stoll, Kyle Chandler
[rating: 3/5]
Reviewed by Michael Dalton
After Damien Chazelle’s startling success last year with the Oscar-laden La La Land, it figures he’d be intent on maintaining a solid track record, Only a few years before, he hit the spotlight with the volcanic Whiplash, a tale of a burgeoning musician who comes up against the teacher from hell. An effective if horrendous film built on sheer intensity, we landed at the finish line as worn out as the hero. I was in the minority about La La Land. A twee film, it came with a tissue-thin story about a boy and a girl, love, ambition, and a whole lot of forgettable music in between. Were it not for Emma Stone (she took a nothing role and made it fly), I would’ve marked it zero. It felt too catered, too fabricated. Chazelle had both eyes on the audience and neither on the screenplay. His new film First Man, inexplicably the first narrative driven picture about Neil Armstrong and that historical moment when he planted the first foot on the moon, is safer still and just as ready-made for the soon to begin horserace, but easily more intelligent. It works thankfully. Set primarily around the preparations for the voyage, its well cast, beautifully scored, and has a voyeuristic appeal. For those who weren’t around in 1969, you’ll see what it took to not only beat Russia to that lunar surface but what it took to be measured for the suit and helmet.
Ryan Gosling is Neil Armstrong, complete with a buzz cut and a studious expression. He carries it neatly if vacantly. You’ll walk away knowing little about this historical figure beyond the tragedy that beset he and his wife Jan (Claire Foy) when their two year-old daughter succumbed to brain cancer and his very quiet determination to be part of America’s history. Gosling’s a curious actor. He delivered a career best performance in Blue Valentine as a panicking husband whose marriage was collapsing, achieved heartthrob status soon after, and last year carried, rather anonymously, Blade Runner 2049. Here again, he’s the vessel for the narrative and here again he’s inoffensive, sturdy, and watchful. It takes a technically proficient actor to bring a man like Armstrong alive. Was he this dull? This single minded? You wait for Gosling to find a tick, a sudden flash of humanity. You eventually do get something but it’s only behind his helmet when he stares into the cosmos and sheds a tear. It is as if he’s seeing life for all it is, an endless eternity. It’s a prize moment accompanied by deafening silence and it makes the waiting worthwhile. How must it have been to be up there? Chazelle secures it like a champion.
First Man is a very methodical film, very prepared, yet I found myself waiting for an emotional outburst of some kind, a charged scene. When it comes its like a tonic and it shoots the film with a blast of humanity. Infuriated at having access to her husband’s mission limited when the craft he’s steering suddenly goes haywire (she has an intercom system wired into it), Jan marches into the bigwigs’ offices and bellows, “You’re a bunch of boys making toys out of balsa wood!” It is such a Line and you want her to keep right on ranting (Foy can breathe fire). Despite the technical malfunctions you’ll witness here (Chazelle keeps a fatal accident and the ensuing carnage out of sight) it’s the one scene that gives the film emotion. It might be easily fumbled too but she gives it oomph, strength, and, pardon me, gravity.
