Directed by: Damien Chazelle
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler
Rated PG-13, 141 minutes
It speaks to Damien Chazelle’s filmmaking talent that he’s effectively made the same movie three times in a row and it hasn’t gotten old yet. “First Man” joins 2014’s “Whiplash” and 2016’s “La La Land” as explorations of the quintessential and obsessive human desire for greatness, a theme that Chazelle’s ambitiously technical and punchy style is well suited to. Far from a perfect film, it still cements Chazelle’s reputation as one of the most gifted filmmakers in Hollywood, and one who could establish a legacy if he finds something new to say.
Unlike Chazelle’s last two films, “First Man” leaves the world of jazz music to focus on the Space Race. Here we follow the stoic Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling, “La La Land”) from the death of his daughter in 1962 through the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, when he and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the moon. Over years of preparations and test missions both successful and calamitous, Armstrong remains even-keeled and focused on the ultimate mission, much to the chagrin of his wife, Janet (Claire Foy, “The Crown”). Janet, stuck at home raising their two sons and painfully aware that several other astronauts have perished in NASA’s pursuit of a lunar landing, struggles mightily with Neil’s unwillingness to acknowledge the risks of his job. Theirs is not a romantic marriage, but one weighed down by tragedy, their daughter’s death haunting them both as Neil prepares to enter a vast and intimidating unknown.
This is a formulaic, uninteresting film in terms of its structure and characters—how many times do we need to see a man doing spectacular things while his wife is reduced to a housebound worrywort?—but “First Man,” like Armstrong, succeeds by staying singularly focused on the task at hand. Though the movie covers the better part of a decade and lasts nearly two and a half hours, it jumps through time with ease and maintains a steady pace, showing us only the moments that matter. And Chazelle, as always, excels at creating suspense, even where it’s not naturally warranted; each moment feels crucial, even when it’s as simple a scene as Neil and Janet wordlessly looking at each other.
There is also implicitly a sense of humility to the movie, reflected in its title. Neil Armstrong may have been the first man on the moon, but with that landmark act coming in the movie’s final minutes, after two hours of seeing the slow, difficult steps it took to get there, all the astronauts who died so that Armstrong could live, the title that belongs to him bears a weight not unlike survivor’s guilt. The film’s greatest success is this ability to treat its protagonist with nuance, especially when that protagonist is a universally adored American hero.
“First Man” also excels as a piece of flashy, technical filmmaking, featuring the most thrilling spaceflight scenes since Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity,” but at the same time, the movie’s smaller-scale storytelling is unable to match the intensity of the action. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy are talented actors (even if Gosling is just reusing the same expressionless monotone from his performance as a literal robot in “Blade Runner 2049”), but the script rarely gives them a chance to convey the full scope of Neil and Janet’s relationship. Every important connection and revelation between them goes unspoken, even in the most tense moments. As a result, the film only skirts around its emotional core, devoting a significant amount of time to something it won’t show us in more than the barest of glimpses.
Of course, it’s precisely this lack of communication between Neil and Janet that the film argues is key to their story and to the personal significance of his moon landing. Greatness invariably demands sacrifice, “First Man” argues, simultaneously asking the viewer to consider just how much sacrifice is necessary. And while it criticizes Armstrong for his emotional stubbornness, the consensus is still that yes, it’s worth it. Who cares if you hurt the few people you know personally when you can give something incredible to untold masses of strangers? Chazelle has now made a career out of asking this question, but while he’s never asked it on such a large scale, he’s also never answered with less certainty.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 11/2/18.