Who knows why some films make an impression with movie goers and why others miss? Sure, sometimes there is a clear answer. Maybe the film was badly marketed, or maybe a film had the misfortune of being released the same day as a huge blockbuster. Or maybe it was just obvious that the movie was going to be a stinker. We have all seen a preview in the theater at some point in our lives and thought, "Wow, why did they make that?! That movie is going to flop."
But sometimes a film comes out that seems to hold a winning hand and then just whiffs. And that is unfortunately what happened to First Man. Actor Ryan Gosling and director Damien Chazelle were coming off the Oscar-winning La La Land. The film was written by Josh Singer, who won the Oscar for Spotlight. Early buzz indicated that First Man would be a serious contender come awards time. And then...it swung and missed. Critics, for the most part, liked the film, but audiences largely stayed home. Which is not to say that First Man was a complete disaster; I think it did make its money back in the end. But First Man deserved better, and I expected it to do better. The question is, why didn't it?
Before we really get started, I have to give you a heads up. I have a lot to say about this movie, so you can expect some SPOILERS!
First Man is the story of Neil Armstrong and the years leading up to his iconic voyage to the moon. It recounts the trials and tribulations of the astronauts as they risk their lives in the space race against the USSR. But that is only half the story. Very early in the film, Neil loses his two year old daughter Karen to cancer. His grief fuels his need to focus all his attention on his work, despite the heavy toll it takes on the rest of his family, including his wife Janet (Claire Foy, The Crown).
It is easy to separate the movie into those two story threads, so let's tackle one at a time. Damien Chazelle said that he wanted to make the greatest space movie ever. He didn't. The Right Stuff is still the king of this mountain and it would take a lot to unseat it. But First Man is still a really solid film. And I have to admit, there is one thing that First Man does better than all other space movies before it - Chazelle makes it vividly and painfully clear how incredibly dangerous the space program was. From the first moments of the film, when Neil Armstrong's X-15 almost gets stuck outside the atmosphere, every test and launch is fraught with tension. The camera gets right in the faces of the actors, so we are stuck with them in these cramped tin can spaces, shaking just as violently as the characters are as they launch into space, listening to the grinding of metal and rattling of bolts as the ship literally sounds like it is going to tear apart all around them. It's petrifying. We all know the history. Neil Armstrong isn't going to die on one of these missions. But it is a true testament to the filmmaking that we still feel like he might. Our brains tell us he obviously survives. But at the same time, all of our senses are screaming, "Oh, he's screwed!" Now that is good filmmaking.
Unfortunately, Chazelle spends so much time focusing on the risks, that he forgets to include some of the triumphs. A lot of astronauts achieved many great things, but the way First Man plays, NASA is burdened with disaster after disaster until Apollo 11. I suppose Chazelle and Singer could argue we've seen those triumphs in other films, so they didn't want to retread them here. This is specifically Neil Armstrong's story, after all. But they could have at least mentioned them to provide a better balance. These other achievements are largely ignored.
Now I'll shift over to the family section of the film, and to Neil Armstrong's increasingly tense relationship with his wife Janet. This time I will start with the bad. The use of extreme closeups and shaky cams that were so effective during the launch sequences really hurt this part of the movie. I don't want to get motion sickness when Neil and Janet are just talking at the dinner table. This is all personal preference, of course, but they should have pulled the camera back, put it on a tripod and just let the actors do their thing. This might sound like a nitpick, and in truth, it kind of is. Because I really connected with these sections of the movie. Even more than the space race, First Man is a story about grief. Neil is grieving for his daughter the whole film, and as personal tragedies mount, he increasingly isolates himself by focusing on work, closing himself off emotionally from everyone else - his friends, his other children and even his wife. I recognized this behavior. I know people who grieve this way. I grieve this way.
In some ways, the most important scene in the film is in the beginning, right after Karen's funeral. Neil gently approaches his wife in bed and quietly asks permission to go to work. And she says yes because she knows he is the type of person who needs that distraction. But that decision is a fateful one. It sets in motion the rest of the film. That initial permission is abused to the point that near the end of the film, Armstrong won't even talk to his children when he is preparing to go to the moon. He doesn't want to open himself up, emotionally. He can't. He'd rather just pack his bags and head to the launch pad. Janet has to literally force him to sit down at the dining room table and talk to his children, in what is one of the movie's best scenes.
As I think about this movie, I keep coming back to that quiet, gentle question after the funeral, "Can I please go to work?" At that crucial moment, these two young grieving parents needed each other to heal. By avoiding that, Neil substituted that need for comfort with a need to work, but this pretty much leaves Janet with nothing and no one to hold on to. It's tragic when you think about it. And I wonder what would have happened if Janet had said no? Maybe Neil Armstrong never would have made it to the moon. But maybe their marriage would have been stronger.
I don't mean for any of this to make Neil Armstrong out as a bad person. He's absolutely not. I really do think he's an American hero. He is doing what he thinks is best for the mission and for his family. He thinks he is building these walls for protection; I don't think he realizes he is pushing his wife further and further away. It is a sad, but fascinating portrayal, and it adds an emotional weight to the relationship that I don't usually see in movies. And it certainly makes the climax of the film, where Neil finally seems to find some measure of peace with his daughters's death, all the more impactful.
Shifting back to the movie as a whole, there is one other thing I wanted to mention. Another of Damien Chazelle's goals was to be as accurate as possible. Of course, they had to change things because this is a movie, and not a documentary, but I was impressed with how accurate they were. From what I read, NASA and the Armstrong family were both pretty happy with the film and the characterizations, and I can see why.
All in all, First Man is a really solid film. I didn't love it, but I loved a lot of things about it, and I wish it had done better. So why didn't it?
I don't think you can really write a review of First Man without addressing the controversy that surrounded the film before its general release. At some point, word leaked out that the American flag was not featured in the moon landing scene and the news spread like wild fire across the internet, sparking angry tirades from people, even politicians. How dare these Canadians (Ryan Gosling and Damien Chazelle) come in and try to erase the "American" part of this American achievement?! It was an embarrassment and unpatriotic! Personally, I think this whole argument was absurd for a whole slew of reasons. Let's hit them one at a time. First of all, the VAST majority of people stoking the flames of this ridiculous dumpster fire hadn't even seen the movie and so had no right to complain. They were getting riled up over something they weren't even sure about. Secondly, the American flag IS featured in the moon landing sequence. For a movie that prides itself on historical accuracy, there is no way they would have erased the flag. Yes, it's true that the actual planting of the flag itself is not depicted, but I don't think that makes the film unpatriotic. If anything, First Man had the opposite effect on me. As the movie ended, I was proud of the achievements of the U.S. space program and humbled by the risks these astronauts took. As I mentioned before, there have been better space movies, but no movie has done as good a job capturing the sacrifices that had to be made. The movie even has an extended montage of celebrations from around the world, with legions of people cheering the moon landing, and even including an archival clip of a French woman saying, "We're all Americans now."
So how is that unpatriotic?
So why wasn't the planting of the American flag a climactic moment of the movie? I think that goes back to Neil Armstrong's personal journey in the film. The most powerful moment of this moon walk needs to be when he pulls out his daughter's bracelet and leaves it in the crater. This is the emotional climax of the film, not the moon landing itself and not even the "one small step for all mankind" line. At the end of the day, what matters most is Neil's love for his daughter. Heck, if there is still any doubt, just listen to the soundtrack. The epic music that accompanies the moon landing is a fully orchestrated version of Karen's theme that we first hear in the beginning of the film when Neil is caring for his sick daughter!
I know this review has been a bit more rambling than usual, and I apologize for that. So let's circle back now. Do I really think this flag controversy hurt First Man? The answer is, I don't know. It's certainly possible, and that would be a shame because then those audiences really missed a fascinating film, and one that despite some glaring flaws, is still very inspiring and rewarding in many different ways.
BEST LINE:
I know this is a cheat, but how could I not choose this line?
Neil Armstrong: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
TRIVIA:
While researching Neil Armstrong, Ryan Gosling came across the astronaut's love of theremin music, which came as bit of a surprise. The theremin is an odd little electrical instrument which produces a sound you might recognize from cheesy 1950s UFO movies (though Miklos Rozca also used the instrument to great effect in the film noir Double Indemnity). Gosling mentioned this to Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz, who decided to include the strange instrument in the film score as a little ode to Neil's love for the instrument.
MVP:
Damien Chazelle was the captain of this mission, and I think he is the clear MVP. He had a clear vision to make First Man one of the most accurate and dangerous films about the space race, and he really did pull it off. While you can also blame him for some of the movie's faults, he deserves a lot of props for bringing something new to the table. As I mentioned before, no movie has ever been this successful at capturing how dangerous these missions truly were. I would say that is some brilliant filmmaking and deserving of my MVP.
