It soon becomes clear that the director's heart is in the flight sequences, the climactic moon landing reenactment, and the various scenes of Neil tamping down his depression and anger because he's a mid-century American man who understands more about physics and engineering than he does his social conditioning. Unfortunately, none of these notes are developed into anything but side trips or afterthoughts. Chazelle and Singer deserve credit for allowing notes of national unease to creep into the story it helps make "First Man" feel truer to the period than other movies about the US space program (although, for its totality of vision, the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" is superior).
#FIRST MAN ON THE MOON FILM TV#
We get hints of this disquiet in conversations and TV images alluding to Vietnam and social protest, and in glimpses of astronauts' wives stewing in the shadows while their husbands claim the spotlight.
Much of the white political left and some women felt the same, even when they were inspired by the astronauts' bravery. A brief sequence near the midpoint shows that many African-Americans (who were behind the scenes participants in the space program, as " Hidden Figures" showed, but weren't allowed in planes and rockets) thought the Apollo missions were an expensive distraction from the fight for racial and economic equality on the ground.
#FIRST MAN ON THE MOON FILM MOVIE#
To their credit, the filmmakers periodically remind us that, as dangerous as Neil's job is, it's at least a respite from the emotional pain of living with loss-and that the helplessness the wives felt as they sat in the living room watching coverage of the mission on TV, or waiting for the phone to ring, was uncompensated emotional torture.Įvery now and then, the movie lets you know that other things were going on in 1960s America besides a race to beat the Soviets to the moon. Neil's wife Janet ( Claire Foy) is grieving, too, but during missions she's stuck at home, or roaming the halls of NASA trying to get information about Neil's safety. Neil, a handsome but tight-lipped test pilot in the mold of Sam Shepard's Chuck Yeager from "The Right Stuff," enrolls in the Apollo program in part because he wants to be distracted from the pain of losing his two-year-old daughter Karen to cancer. This blockbuster drama from director Damien Chazelle (" Whiplash," " La La Land") and screenwriter Josh Singer (" Spotlight," " The Post") implies that there might not be a lot of difference, and that if there is, the astronauts aren't the people to explain it, because they're steeped in a tradition that forbids admitting you even have feelings, much less discussing them. To do this kind of work, you have to be the bravest person on earth, or have a death wish. They expend most of their mental energy studying the instrument panels in front of them and trying to process the information that's being fed through their headsets by mission control, knowing that one missed fact or wrong choice could mean their deaths.
There might be a brief moment of beauty or peace, along with a sidelong glimpse through a window of the blue earth, the grey-white moon, or the blackness of space, but that's generally all the aesthetic pleasure they get-and maybe all they can handle. The vibrations of the trip rattle their bones and the noise scorches their eardrums.
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More so than other films about the US space program, including " The Right Stuff" and " Apollo 13," it makes the experience seem more wild and scary than grand, like being in the cab of a runaway truck as it smashes through a guardrail and tumbles down the side of a mountain.įuture first-man-on-the-moon Neil Armstrong ( Ryan Gosling) and his fellow Apollo Program team-members zip themselves into insulated suits fitted with bags to catch their body waste, strap themselves into narrow seats, wait hours or days for clearance to take off, then spend a few minutes being shaken and rolled. If you want to get an almost first-person sense of what it felt like to fly in one of the earliest supersonic planes or ride a rocket into orbit and beyond, "First Man" is the movie to see.
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