Damien Chazelle’s movie about the first
moon landing is visually ravishing and quietly absorbing. (Review by Patrick
Compton. 8/10)
I was flying from England to South Africa
49 years ago when my flight was forced to land in Frankfort, Germany, in order
to change crews. How lucky we were. During the interim we were able to watch
the moon landing “live” on a huge screen at the airport.
Director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land) captures all the
wonder of that moment in 1969 in his latest movie, in which Ryan Gosling gives
another of his profoundly understated performances (think Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive in 2011) as the almost wordless
astronaut Neil Armstrong.
Adapted by Spotlight scriptwriter Josh
Singer from James R Hansen’s book, this movie is by no means a demonstration of
American tub-thumping although there are plenty of references to the space race
between the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, Chazelle has boldly
chosen to turn what could so easily have been an exercise in American space
bravura into a low-key study of grief.
How so? Singer’s script chooses to
reference Armstrong’s key motivation as his deep sense of loss over the death
of his young daughter, Karen, of cancer. It’s a bereavement that informs almost
everything he does in the movie, leading to a moving emotional climax on the
moon that notably excludes the planting of the American flag (an omission,
incidentally, that angered President Donald Trump).
Time and again cinematographer Linus
Sandgren captures a reserved Gosling in isolation in the Armstrong home,
establishing the presence of a solitary man who is precariously balanced
between inner and outer space. Claire Foye, excellent as his sometimes
exasperated wife, struggles to penetrate her husband’s bubble, as do their two
young sons.
Although it is Armstrong’s haunting memory
of Karen that informs Armstrong’s training for the Apollo 11 mission, Chazelle
doesn’t underestimate the objective dangers of the enterprise and the
extraordinary bravery of Armstrong and his fellow astronauts as they undergo a
succession of claustrophobic stress tests.
The astronauts famously described their
mission experience as being “spam in a can” in Philip Kaufman’s masterful The Right Stuff (1983), and Phil
Barrie’s screeching, jangling cockpit sound effects underline their sense of
helplessness and imminent danger. There’s no avoiding the spectre of death as
the shocking loss of friends and colleagues punctuate the action in the years
running up to the climactic mission.
Equally, however, when immediate danger has
passed, it is Justin Hurwitz’s delicate score that emphasises the haunting
beauty and loneliness of space as well as Armstrong’s private universe of grief
and loss. On a warmer note, and taking a lead from Lunar Rhapsody, a romantic tune that Armstrong loved, Chazelle
allows us to connect with his very private hero.
The
First Man opened last Friday, on October 26, 2018.
I would recommend watching it at the spectacular Gateway IMAX cinema. – Patrick
Compton
Posts
