First Man

When I look back at the times in my life that represent moments of proud achievement, those moments were almost always followed by a curious sense of melancholy. This used to bother me a great deal. Why do I feel sad after I’ve worked so hard to accomplish this goal? What’s missing? I’ve since learned that this is quite common. After achieving something you’ve worked so hard for, it’s not unusual to be left with a feeling of longing. What the hell do I do now? Where do I go from here? What now?

That feel of achievement-based melancholy is represented so well in Damien Chazelle’s new, appropriately thrilling and patient film, First Man.

The backdrop of First Man is America’s involvement in the space race throughout the 1960s, which eventually led to the U.S. putting two men on the moon. But the movie is really about Neil Armstrong. That reserved, complicated, misunderstood astronaut who worked tirelessly to achieve a goal, and ultimately lived out that goal for the entire world to see and remember forever.

The film spends its lengthy, but never stale, running time tracking Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) through his adventures at NASA, while attempting to stay present at home with his steadfast wife, Janet (Claire Foy), and their children. We’ve seen the space race depicted with strong effect before, namely in The Right Stuff, Apollo 13 and From the Earth to the Moon. And while the spectacle of First Man certainly deserves to be mentioned alongside those works, Chazelle’s insistence on capturing Armstrong at home helps anchor the film in an unexpected level of emotion.

If you’ve seen Chazelle’s two previous films, Whiplash and La La Land, it’s no secret that the young director knows how to construct and execute a thrilling set piece. Every air and spacecraft sequence in First Man, from its astounding, nearly dialogue-free opening, to its lunar surface conclusion, is jaw dropping. The bombastic sounds within the aircraft, the radiating heat, the tight camerawork – it all roots these sequences in the pure danger of these real life missions. These missions were not easy work, nor were they fun. They were scary and new and potentially fatal. First Man, perhaps better than any film before, really helps the audience understand what it is like in a cramped air and spacecraft. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren (who won an Oscar for shooting La La Land), and editor Tom Cross (who won an Oscar for cutting Whiplash), deserve endless praise for First Man’s ceaselessly tense and claustrophobic design.

But the heart of the movie is at home. If you watch real interviews with Neil Armstrong, it’s clear that he was a reserved guy. He didn’t talk a lot, and he always skirted praise with genuinely humility. He was prone to giving credit to everyone, as opposed to accepting it solely for himself. As depicted in First Man, this sense of restraint followed Armstrong everywhere. Gosling conveys Armstrong’s repression with stoic looks, and careful gestures. His scenes with Foy, who consistently plays Janet with a strength that was so compelling to watch, represent some of the finest work both actors have delivered. The scenes with the Armstrong family have, at times, the semblance of the joy found in a Terrence Malick sequence, and can quickly be replaced with the emotional confusion of an Ingmar Bergman film. I honestly didn’t know much about Armstrong’s personal life before watching this movie, but I so appreciated the quiet insight that Chazelle and Gosling presented in the film.

What I appreciate most about the film, though, is that it depicts many of the astronauts of NASA, particularly Armstrong, as men who did not derive a great amount of pleasure from their work. Gosling’s Armstrong rarely smiles when mentioning his job (or at all). He’s exact, humble, and serious. He’s lost friends in the space race, and the looming threat of his missions constantly consumes him, at home, in the office, and inside the air and spacecraft.

The event depicted in the film’s conclusion will surprise no one. And that’s the trick of movies based on such a well-known story: since there is no mystery of what is to come, it’s not what is depicted, but how it is depicted that matters. The moon landing is an equally ferocious and quiet experience, handled with great intensity and restraint by Chazelle. Yet the sequence concludes with a moment I didn’t anticipate, and it’s certainly something that shouldn’t be ruined in print. I will say that the emotional impact of this moment left me profoundly moved, and as far as I’m concerned, the scene is one of the crowning achievements of 2018 in film.

First Man isn’t about walking on the moon. It’s about a repressed, thoughtful, complicated man who worked tirelessly to do his job, and do it well. But at what cost? Is there joy to be found in achieving something no one else ever will? Or are you alone, separated from those you love, without a single word to say to capture your feelings? A-