Three stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.12.18
Director Damien Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer jump into their film with an edge-of-the-seat sequence: the highest of solo pilot Neil Armstrong’s numerous test flights in the X-15 rocket airplane.
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| While Janet Armstrong (Claire Foy) putters in the kitchen, her husband Neil (Ryan Gosling) and their elder son Rick (Gavin Warren) work on a jigsaw puzzle during a rare moment of family bonding, unaware that a phone call is about to bring disturbing news. |
It’s a savagely cut cacophony of images: the shuddering and jouncing aircraft; the roar of the rocket engines that blast Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) up to 207,500 feet; similarly jittery close-ups on his determined expression.
And then utter silence, as the engines switch off (intentionally) ,and Armstrong gets a panoramic view of the blue globe below, against the dark-night contrast at the edge of space.
Totally, amazingly breathtaking.
But that’s just the preamble. Armstrong’s return to Earth goes awry when the X-15 begins to “bounce” off the upper atmosphere, sending him even higher into the mesosphere above. Utter chaos, as he tries to compensate while mentally plotting a new landing spot, having zoomed past the planned touchdown at Edwards Air Force Base.
Like, wow.
First Man is laden with sequences even superior to this one, given a degree of verisimilitude — by visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert — wholly on par with the we-are-there reality viewers experienced while watching 2013’s Gravity. It becomes clear that Armstrong had more lives than a cat, and also possessed seat-of-the-pants math and physics calculating skills that made him just this side of a walking computer. (A good thing, too, given the limitations of 1960s mainframes.)
If only this film’s quieter moments were handled as well.
Singer’s script is adapted from James R. Hansen’s 2005 best-seller, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, the pilot/astronaut’s only official biography. The film’s intimate “family” element takes place in between stunning piloting events that could be considered myth, were the details not so well known: the aforementioned 1962 X-15 flight, the 1966 Gemini 8 crisis, the 1968 mishap with one of the Earthbound Lunar Lander Research Vehicles, and — the reason for this film’s existence — the 1969 Apollo 11 mission.
Considerable time is spent with Armstrong’s home life, particularly early on, as he and his wife Janet (Claire Foy) agonize over the final months of their 2-year-old daughter, Karen, who died while being treated for a malignant tumor at the base of her brain stem. This is a lot to take in, so quickly, and explanations are minimal.
The presentation of this chapter establishes the style Chazelle and cinematographer Linus Sandgren use throughout the film: lots of tight close-ups and jiggle-cam tracking shots, like one would expect from home movies. This suggests documentary-style authenticity — which Chazelle likely intended — but it also assumes considerable pre-existing knowledge of the part of the viewer, and repeatedly leaves questions unanswered.
I got a sense, heightened as the film continued, that this 141-minute drama has been distilled from a longer director’s edit. Details are left unexplained; scenes cut abruptly to unrelated events.
