“Houston, we (don’t) have a problem….” First Man launches to the moon-and-back with a satisfying plot that triggers the emotional, scientific nerd in all of us.
Where does your equilibrium go when you’re upside down, inside out and being shaken beyond snow-globe capacity in a space ship? What does a scientist hunger for? It takes a certain type of risk-taker to go through vigorous training missions only to travel to outer space…a place where others have tried, failed and died. You have to be someone willing too, to risk the day-to-day mechanics of family (wife, kids, dog) to keep up with NASA and their choices.
Or, maybe you have to be a father who has lost his child and longs to be as close to heaven – to be moonstruck – as humanly possible? And that’s the story’s touching parallel. Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) is someplace isolated both emotionally and eventually physically from the pain of the greatest burden of all…burying a child.
Perhaps outer space has answers.
There’s been other films on astronauts, but not like this. One can’t help but watch First Man and not be reminded of the similarities to The Right Stuff, Phillip Kaufman and Tom Wolfe’s collaboration about ego-driven, macho astronauts testing spacecraft to its limits. There’s been Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, and Apollo 18and most recently Sandra Bullock in Gravity. But none have accomplished Gosling’s one leap for mankind…and a bigger leap in the search for ‘meaning.’
NASA had Project Gemini and its failures, and the Soviet Union gained on the USA in mission successes. The film opens on Neil Armstrong (Gosling) on a test mission and then off to Houston. No one, including his wife, Janet (Claire Foy) is pleased with the involved risk. There is no pat on the back from the public either. The story is set against the protests of Viet Nam, the politics of NASA, and the tax payers complaining that their dollars could be used for more advantageous things outside of space exploration.
First Man (on the moon) forces us to formulate the questions of ‘how on earth does a scientist know what to anticipate at the edges of the atmosphere?’ But it also takes us to a human place that reflects on when you lose something – or in this case someone – so intricately woven into the daily fiber of your being, how far can you go. How far will you go?
Director Damien Chazelle reteams with Gosling since La La Land. This outing is written by Josh Singer and based on Jamese R. Hansen’s biography of Armstrong, but without belaboring the depth of Armstrong’s childhood and earlier years. Chazelle knows how to minimalize and isolate his astronauts into a vortex that is relatable. Ironically it turns the mirror on our own behavior even fifty years later. He takes common footage (we’ve seen as frequently as the JFK assassination) and brings it to life so that the audience thinks like an astronaut.
Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll) joins Armstrong on his mission to the moon while Janet Armstrong waits home with her children. Foy’s performance is angst driven. At times the loneliest woman in the world to Gosling’s loneliest man beyond the planet.
This is the year that defines actors careers in a biopic. This is the year Ryan Gosling will add the words “Best Actor” to his vocabulary.