While he’s only had three feature films under his belt prior to this year, Damien Chazelle has quickly become one of the most prominent filmmakers in the entire industry. The Rhode Island native first got his start in 2009 with a black-and-white romantic jazz musical called Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, which received great reviews after its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Then, when Chazelle’s plans to make an even more lavish musical ran into some issues in terms of getting a studio to finance it, he then helmed the 2014 drama Whiplash about a jazz drummer who found himself constantly getting harassed by his abusive instructor. Like Guy and Madeline, the film was a big hit with critics and ended up earning three Oscars at that year’s Academy Awards, where it was also nominated for Best Picture. And with all that success, Chazelle was finally given the opportunity to do his big musical, which eventually turned in 2016’s La La Land. This charming tribute to classic cinematic musicals proved to be another critical hit for the young director as well as being his most commercially successful outing to date. And while nowadays it’s known more as ‘the film that almost won Best Picture’ following the infamous gaffe at the end of that year’s Oscars ceremony, it also won six other Oscars that night, with Chazelle becoming the youngest director ever to win Best Director. But now Chazelle and La La Land’s leading man Ryan Gosling are back with their next big project, First Man, a film that explores the story behind one of the most iconic moments in American history, the 1969 spaceflight of Apollo 11, where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men ever to walk on the moon. Gosling takes on the lead role of Armstrong in this adaptation of author James R. Hansen’s best-selling biography from 2005. And with tension-filled spaceflight sequences and a script that takes an unfiltered look into the mindset of an American hero, First Man turns out to be yet another masterpiece from Chazelle.
It is the 1960’s in America, and at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration agency, there is one important situation at hand; staying on top of the Russians during the Space Race. The situation becomes even more imperative when Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to ever make it into space in 1961, with NASA chief Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler) immediately establishing NASA’s new goal of landing a man on the moon. During this time, one of the most committed members of NASA’s crew of pilots is Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), who makes the conscientious decision to stay committed to helping NASA land a man on the moon even after he and his wife Janet (Claire Foy) suffer an unspeakable family tragedy. However, as Neil and the rest of his fellow NASA coworkers soon find out, this endeavor proves to be a lot more challenging than they initially anticipated. During the test phase known as Project Gemini, Neil and his fellow astronauts are subjected to life-and-death situations on a constant basis. And even after NASA transitions into the Apollo program, the first Apollo mission ends up being an unprecedented disaster when an onboard fire kills all three of its crew members during, of all things, a pre-launch test. This, in turn, effectively casts a dark cloud over the company in the eyes of the public, who feel that the country is wasting a lot of money on a seemingly impossible venture. However, NASA soldiers on, and Neil soon finds himself selected to lead the first official mission to the moon as part of the crew of Apollo 11.
The tension that Chazelle manages to craft for this film is second to none, which is even more impressive given that it’s based on such an iconic moment in this country’s history that basically anyone going into it knows exactly how it ends. He does this primarily through the film’s numerous flight sequences. Instead of relying on shots of the rocket ships’ exteriors like many other films with this premise, the film instead gets up close and personal with the astronauts housed within their interiors. And to be clear, this isn’t just a case where these flight sequences are nothing more than non-stop shaky cam, as it does make them more intense by highlighting what it must’ve been like cramped within those command modules. However, this sense of confinement isn’t the case for every spaceflight sequence in the film. Once it finally gets to the Apollo 11 mission, that’s when Chazelle and his usual crew (cinematographer Linus Sandgren, editor Tom Cross, and composer Justin Hurwitz) utilize more exterior shots, resulting in a truly grand finale with beautiful cinematography, tight editing, and epic music. And yes, this is very much one of those films that’s worth seeing in IMAX, as all the sequences that were set on the moon’s surface were filmed with IMAX cameras. This is then bolstered further by the film’s decision to not glamorize any of the events that led to the Apollo 11 mission. It clearly establishes that a lot of trial and error had to occur for the mission to be successful, and unfortunately, all this trial and error did lead to some men losing their lives.
The other key aspect of this film’s narrative is how it ultimately tells the story of Neil Armstrong. The film makes it clear from the very beginning that, unlike many of his fellow astronauts, Neil Armstrong was not a very outgoing person. He often distanced himself from others, even his friends and family at times, so that he can stay fully committed to fulfilling NASA’s goal of landing a man on the moon. Thus, it can be said that the film doesn’t necessarily show too much about its main character, but by the end of the film, you will genuinely understand where he is on an emotional level, primarily thanks to one crucial moment during the finale where Neil has a moment of true emotional catharsis. And performance-wise, Ryan Gosling handles all of this excellently, perfectly conveying the stoic persona of someone who’s very much a reluctant hero. Gosling also works well alongside his primary co-star, Claire Foy as Neil’s wife Janet, who’s put through the emotional ringer via the same stress that several of her fellow astronaut wives have gone through when fearing for their husbands’ lives. And although she does support Neil through and through, you can tell that there are instances where this is put to the test. Finally, while Gosling and Foy have the most prominent roles in the story, the film also boasts an excellent supporting cast. This includes, among others, Kyle Chandler as NASA chief Deke Slayton, Jason Clarke as Neil and Janet’s neighbor Ed White, who was one of the tragic figures of the Apollo 1 fire, and Corey Stoll as fellow Apollo 11 crew member Buzz Aldrin.
Once again, Damien Chazelle delivers another outstanding directorial effort. First Man is an intense and emotionally raw look into the life of an American icon, and it does this in a manner that’s drastically different than most other biopics. It doesn’t romanticize any of the work that went into getting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon’s surface. It shows that the mission to land a man on the moon was incredibly dangerous and threatened the lives of the men who directly participated in it. But in showing all the failures, this then makes the success that was the Apollo 11 mission incredibly satisfying to behold on film, and on a technical level, the transition from intense, claustrophobic, and often perilous flights to the magnificent launch of Apollo 11 is outstanding. This film also succeeds in conveying the emotional turmoil that Neil Armstrong went through during this time. Just like how the film doesn’t romanticize the process that put him on the moon, this take on the life of one of the most famous figures in American history is unfiltered in its overall execution to show how the Apollo 11 mission allowed him to overcome one of the darkest moments in his life. In short, as someone who obviously wasn’t around when all this went down, I feel that this film does a fantastic job of conveying the aura of what it must’ve felt like at the time to witness, as Armstrong himself famously stated, that ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. And because of this, I’d say that First Man is one of the most culturally relevant films in recent memory and a must-see on the big screen.
Rating: 5/5!
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