American Exceptionalism

Rating: 8/10 (14 October 2018)

First Man is a compelling, emotional, riveting tale of how America, NASA, and a bunch of what would now be derided as 'privileged white men' created the singular event in human history: a human being on the moon.
Neil Armstrong describing to the world, live on television and radio, that his was but one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
I would guess that practically everybody in the world, even now, knows what he said.
Most have read of the controversy surrounding the conscious, politically motivated, decision to not show the American flag being planted on the moon by the Canadian (read citizen of the world) Director. But, as we saw this afternoon, there's now a lingering wide view of the LEM resting on the moon's surface with the newly planted American flag clearly in the picture...causing this viewer to wonder if it was newly planted 'post final cut' addition to stem the potential loss of audience the negative reaction that the omission caused?
Otherwise, the movie is a rather straight forward, linear telling of how NASA's moon landing came to be: the barely mentioned Mercury program, followed by several two-man, Gemini launches to test the theoretical possibilities of using multiple vehicles requiring in-space rendezvous to make the mission viable with available technology. And, then, the audacious Apollo program which had to invent and test the largest rocket ever constructed to get humans to the moon and safely back...the gigantic, strangely beautiful, instantly recognizable, Saturn.
Which had a test launch one night when I was home from college and lit up the Indian Harbour Beach sky like it was a man-made, sun. The rippling, guttural roar of the launch reaching us as the Saturn rose in a new day sky, shaking the windows of my parent's home, and pressing my shirt to my body, twenty miles from the Cape.
In its retelling, First Man recounts the drama and tragedy of those years. Incidents now mostly forgotten: A T-38 crash that killed two of the Gemini astronauts during training; the disastrous fire that killed an entire Apollo crew while the capsule was being tested on the launch pad; the first attempt at a space rendezvous causing the Gemini capsule, piloted by Neil Armstrong, to careen out of control, tumbling wildly and dangerously, as the crew fought to stabilize it before they blacked out and the capsule was destroyed. Then, near the end of the movie, the mounting tension and drama played out live on television, as the LEM sought its landing location and not finding it until Neil Armstrong overrode the computers, taking manual control, and landing the LEM with no fuel remaining.
Some of this, in First Man, is breathtaking. All of it is riveting.
The human story that holds the movie together thankfully doesn't use the normal Hollywood stereotype of a complaining wife and a noble husband attempting to do heroic things. I wish that such unreal, unnatural, uninteresting, and demeaning depictions of women would be forever consigned to the dust heap of Hollywood tripe and a more natural male/female/husband/wife life become common in movies about uncommon people who do great things.
Which happily and realistically occurs in First Man.
A family tragedy becomes the moving subplot of this powerful recounting of one of the world's most historic events. Yet, even as a subplot, it is not a contrivance, and its emotional impact on the Armstrong's had me verklempt and more accepting of Neil Armstrong's almost off-putting stoicism in the face of all things. And, makes Ryan Gosling's laconic, strong, and silent portrayal convincing. Indeed, at some point in the movie, he becomes Neil Armstrong, something, I would guess, all actors act to achieve.
First Man shows the astronauts and their families as human beings. Extraordinary, but recognizable human beings. Men, women and children, all with hopes and fears and frailties. All displaying courage, humanity, skill, and drive. Watching them, I thought of the children and families I grew up around on Army posts around the world. They were like the people in this movie. All of us are. We're Americans.
The movie, though directed by a Canadian, and starring a Canadian, despite the kerfuffle about the flag, is a love story about what the meritocracy that is America can do, what humankind is capable of.
John Kennedy promised that America would put a man on the moon within the decade.
We did it in less than seven years.
Fifty years on, it remains a universally shared example of human accomplishment.
I watched the second moon landing in a bar in Athens...the Greek crowd cheered, pounded us on our backs in joy, wept and bought us glass after glass of retsina.
We drank to America, to Greece, to Mickey Mouse, to John Wayne, to the world.
First Man will remind you of those times, and make you hope for more like them.