Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 21 minutes
Director: Damien Chazelle
Quick Impressions:
Whiplash was by far my favorite Best Picture nominee of 2014. (I liked La La Land, too, though it’s possible I liked the Ryan Gosling Saved Jazz meme even more.)
But those two films are so music driven. When I first heard Damien Chazelle was making a film about Neil Armstrong going to the moon, I thought it seemed like such a departure. Then it hit me. “He’s going to make it musical.” And he did.
Don’t get the wrong idea. First Man isn’t a musical (though the performance of “Whitey on the Moon” is pretty great). First Man is musical.
Aurally this movie is a masterpiece. Chazelle turns Armstrong’s years-long race to the moon into a kind of symphony composed of ordinary (and extraordinary) sounds. Basically, the sounds tell us the story (both the sequence of events and the emotional intensity of those events). This works out well since the mysteriously taciturn Armstrong obviously isn’t going to tell us much in words.
My husband and I loved the 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, which featured interviews with what seemed like every living astronaut who had ever been anywhere near the moon, except Neil Armstrong who was notoriously private. (His desire to stay out of the public eye probably helped contribute to the persistent conspiracy theory that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked.) This film offers some possible insight into Armstrong’s motivations. We get a great line from him about different perspective giving us new understanding, and this story uses a telling kernel from Armstrong’s personal life to present him to us from a different perspective. It’s a compelling portrait.
And, of course, Ryan Gosling is the perfect actor to play someone who rarely speaks but has eyelashes that seem designed by God to catch the light. (First Man treats us to so many epic sights–the earth from space, the moon, explosions, crashes, the vastness of the beyond. But I think the image that will stick with me the most is Ryan Gosling’s eyelashes in profile, bathed in light, aglow with the brilliance of all the cosmos. Seriously, we get a shot of his eyelashes catching the light multiple times, just as often as we see heavenly bodies or whizzing rockets. I’ve noticed Gosling’s gift for prolonged silence before, but this light-catching lash thing is new to me.) Lashes aside, Gosling is perfect for the part and gives a moving performance that seems likely to earn him an Oscar nomination (though you never know).
But the real star of First Man is the soundtrack. The original music by Justin Hurwitz is gorgeous and certainly my pick for Best Score. It’s still early in the year, but I can’t imagine another score eclipsing it. The music is eerily lovely (and gets bonus points from me for using the theremin). It perfectly complements the moments of ponderous silence in a drama ordinarily overflowing with noise. Even better than the orchestral music, though, is the music created organically by the careful arrangement and showcasing of the sounds occurring within each dramatic scene. Careful crafting like this should earn First Man multiple Oscars, possibly even Best Picture.
The Good:
Stoic wonder Ryan Gosling makes such a compelling, sympathetic Neil Armstrong that I might have liked Claire Foy’s Janet less because I wanted to see everything from his side. If I were a wife, I couldn’t handle a husband so distanced, but as I watched the movie, I wanted to rant at her, “Just give him some space! Can’t you see the man is trying to go to the moon!”
The movie begins with an action scene that thoroughly convinced me I’m the wrong person to go to space, pilot a plane, or make a decision. But almost right away we delve into another storyline, and we get a crucial event that casts a long shadow over the rest of the film. Neither my husband nor I expected this material since we went in not knowing much about Armstrong as a man. These early moments are absolutely gutting, and for me, they were the story. Suddenly I didn’t care as much about potential exploits in space. I wanted to see how Neil and his wife Jan would survive this event, how it would shape them, when other characters would learn about it, when it would come up again.
As we watch, we see Armstrong is chosen for the Apollo 11 mission for two reasons. 1) He keeps his head in a crisis 2) He hasn’t been killed in a horrible disaster. As I watched First Man, I kept remembering In the Shadow of the Moon and anticipating awful accidents. Imagine how jarring and destabilizing these would be if you were first experiencing them in real time and didn’t know they were coming!
Some of the other characters in the space program get great representation here. The movie has a terrific supporting cast. My favorites were Jason Clarke as the doomed Ed White and Corey Stoll as the abrasive Buzz Aldrin. (I always think of his line on The Simpsons, “Second comes right after first!” Aldrin has long participated gamely in popular culture, but here we see that Neil has perhaps a slightly different take on him than I do.) If the movie gets a bunch of Oscar nominations, Clarke could possibly slip into Best Supporting Actor. In that event, expect to see a clip of his moment of frustration while watching the breaking news at all the awards shows.
I also really liked Kyle Chandler as Deke Slayton. It’s not a showy performance, but that’s actually what makes it so good. Ciarán Hinds is memorable, too. And there are tons of other famous faces doing great work in the space program.
Best Scene:
I’m a person who thrives on dialogue, and I never sit in silence if I could chatter endlessly. To me Robert Redford’s silent performance in All is Lost seems crazy because if I were alone on a boat, I would start talking to myself after five minutes and never stop until the final glug. I turn lyric poems into narratives if possible. When I find meaning in an experience, I instantly verbalize it, so I can understand what is happening. Sometimes I take notes when nothing is happening for the pure pleasure of writing down words.
So what Chazelle is capable of doing with sound astounds me. I am in awe of his gifts.
The launch sequence when Neil takes Gemini 8 into space is one of the most amazing, aurally stimulating, viscerally overwhelming scenes I have ever experienced. Chazelle shows us the intensity of being an astronaut and also finds the music in the moment.
This is just breathtaking filmmaking (the visuals are great, too), and I would have no idea how to do it.
I write novels. Watching, I laughed to myself and realized that this melodious cacophony of adrenaline presented by me would read as a single line. “Then they went to space.”
What Chazelle does here is beautiful. And it would be great to show in the classroom to make history come alive for students.
Best Action Sequence:
The best action sequence comes just a little while later when the spacecraft malfunctions. I loved the sound it makes.
The film’s opening sequence does a fantastic job of setting the tone, too.
Watching, I thought, bemused, “Why would anyone go to the moon? It would be like getting an MRI for days.” Seriously, I can barely make it through the submarine ride at Disneyland!
Best Scene Visually:
The film is lots of fun visually, too. I couldn’t help but notice that this movie featured abundant shaky cam and lens flare just like A Star is Born. So the emotional intensity of going to the moon is a lot like the feeling of falling in love. That sounds about right.
I love the use of visors, windows, reflections, but my favorite image is Neil facing away from the enormous plume of fire and smoke after bailing out of the lunar landing simulator.
Also this movie sure lets us know that the Armstrongs did their part to conserve energy. They make evening meals look like a stage play as they sit directly under just one tiny light. In one scene, their son asks to go out and play (at night) and I thought, “Yeah it’s probably brighter outside in the moonlight than it is in the house!”
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Ryan Gosling:
This movie made me realize that while I look wistfully up at the beautiful moon all the time, I never think, “Hey! I should go there!”
Gosling’s Neil Armstrong, on the other hand, kind of seems like he’s always been on the moon, like he lives on his own planet in his own space, like when he actually gets to the moon, he thinks, “Finally someplace quiet where a man can hear himself think!”
Gosling’s significant moment on the moon made me cry so much. An earlier moment in which he cries sets up this powerful scene beautifully.
There’s such subtlety in Gosling’s silences. He probably deserves an Oscar for his many understated moments, but he’s most likely to get one because people are moved by his few moments of very visible and comprehensible anguish.
Probably the best thing about his performance is that has so many variations. He laughs, cries, faces death, loses his temper, buries his emotions. We see all of this. One particularly nice moment is a rare outburst at a friend’s funeral.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Claire Foy:
I think Foy is practically a shoe-in for a Best Supporting Actress nomination. This movie seems likely to get multiple nominations. Plus her work on The Crown has made her extremely popular.
I do think this role has a number of limitations, though. Foy shows raw emotional intensity–all the time. It’s pretty difficult to be that emotional and that intense and that controlled. So she’s definitely pulling out all the stops. But I wish we could have seen a bit more variation from her. Even in her “relaxed” and “happy” moments, she’s still incredibly intense.
Now, granted, she’s playing a real person, and the actual Janet Armstrong may be intense all the time. Also, while I personally felt Sean Penn’s part in Mystic River didn’t give him the chance to show enough range, he did win an Oscar, nevertheless (beating Bill Murray and Johnny Depp so it’s not like it was a weak field). (Note, I’m not disparaging Penn’s performance, just pointing out that he cried for his dead daughter almost the entire time because that’s what the part called for.) Sometimes unrelenting strong emotion works just fine for Oscar voters.
Foy’s best moment comes when she forces Neil to say good bye to their children because here her intensity reveals all at once her vulnerability, her rage, her resentment, her fear, her love, her hatred, her uncertainty, and her resolve.
The Negatives:
At a certain point, I kind of stopped caring if Armstrong ever got to the moon. The film was good, and I always appreciated its artistry (seriously, it is so well crafted!), but sometimes I felt ready for it to end already.
Now, I have to admit, just at a moment (near the end, on the moon) when I was thinking, “Maybe this is a film whose whole doesn’t live up to the promise of its parts,” Armstrong did something that made me cry so much. The movie worked hard to earn those tears, and I had to watch the whole thing in order to feel the proper emotion at the perfect time. I do think each scene works better as a scene than the parts work as a whole. But Gosling’s portrayal of Armstrong is so gripping and sympathetic, so I guess we need the entire movie for that to happen.