First Man makes Damian Chazelle look be a veteran.

Rating: 9/10 (31 January 2019)

Damien Chazelle was catapulted to the top of America's hottest young directors so quickly, it's difficult to comprehend his thrillingly original music drama cum psychological horror story debut, Whiplash, was only four years (and six Oscars) ago. But as much as I loved that pneumatic opening act to his career, I detested the second; the inexplicable awards and acclaim devourer, La La Land. I didn't think it was overrated or not worthy of the all the shiny baubles that went its way, I actually hated everything about it. Almost uniquely both a bad movie AND a bad sloppy, cheesy, clichÃ©d musical, with sit-com worthy acting, that saw him become the youngest recipient of a best director Oscar in history (and Emma Stone, perhaps the worst performance to win Best Actress this side of Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love).
So I arrived in the orbit of his Neil Armstrong-moon landing biopic at a loss as what to expect, something compounded by the name Steven Spielberg in the executive credits - the last person I'd want near an all-American hero movie, as prone to black and white moralizing and sentimental heart string pulling as he is. Yet once again and in another very different environment to either of his previous movies, Chazelle's dynamic confidence gives an accurate indication of what's to come from the opening minutes.
Here Hollywood's go to young leading man Ryan Gosling (arguably usurped now by Bradley Cooper) playing first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, enters the 1960's cocooned inside a rocket with wings, bouncing off of the edge of the earth's atmosphere, almost achieving space flight before intending to. It's a thrilling gut punch, full of the eerie silences, scraping metallic noises, whirring dials, serene beauty and absolute terror that inform much of the film's sky high action. Quickly we are back to the suburban white-bread American home with his wife (played with wide-eyed edge by a stunning Claire Foy) and their young children, the youngest of whom is at the end of her short life.
First Man makes great use of these opposing environs, juxtaposing the near impossible danger of Armstrong's day job, with resolutely normal home life - just with a little more relief greeting each, "Hi honey, I'm Home'. After Gosling's Armstrong manages to score a spot on the nascent Gemini astronaut program (designed to prepare for the actual Apollo moon landings themselves), the wider cast of like-minded picket-fence adventurers assemble in a Houston via NASA recreation of suburbia. In particular he befriends fellow pilots, Elliot See (Patrick Fugit) and Ed White (the always excellent and increasingly prevalent Australian actor, Jason Clark).
What follows (taken from James R. Hansen's official Armstrong biography, First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong) is a decade of growing family life, terrifying technological milestones, ambition, personal rivalry, tragedy and the social upheaval of the sixties, where Russia is always one crucial step ahead and where the enormous physical and monetary cost of the race to the moon, is equally unpopular with the public and politicians alike.
If there are many praises I could sing about First Man, I'd start with it's even handed, subtle dryness - my fears of a saccharine, noble, swelling, heroic guiding hand from Spielberg were completely unfounded, to the extent I wonder how much of his influence was flat out rejected. There's a matter of factness to proceedings and a focus on detail and events that's entirely welcome, these men are extraordinary in their work but resolutely ordinary men. Chazelle doesn't amplify faults or heroism to histrionic levels, neither does he engage in the kind of reductive moral absolutism and offensive simplification (bordering on propaganda) that blighted a film like American Sniper.
His cast are similarly allowed to breathe and exist without the awards-worthy grandstanding so common in "great" true life stories, Gosling's low key internal performance (something a grand-stander like Cooper could learn from) won't win him awards but is pitch-perfect for a modest, quiet man like Armstrong. His role is amplified by the late arrival of Corey Stoll as the far more vivacious, outgoing and polarizing Buzz Aldrin - who would accompany him to the grey shore. The standout is undoubtedly British actress Claire Foy, as Armstrong's wife Janet - she is magnetic without doing anything, her startled eyes conveying incredible building pressure, she owns every scene she is in and is almost the antithesis of the kind of American housewife we are used to in this terrain (ironically it's Chazelle's own real life wife Olivia Hamilton, who gives us that standard Tom Hanks wife role).
Chazelle's direction is mature, appropriate, sure-footed and intelligent throughout - rarely making himself centre-stage. Gone is the all-singing floral overkill of La La Land or the dynamic intensity of Whiplash, showing we are just coming to terms with his already formidable range (I could not tell you what I expect him to offer next). He handles the scary intensity of action, the mundanity of home life and the transitions between both with equal consistency. This already excellent and fascinating drama (seriously, how any sane human had the courage to get one of these explosive, metallic death traps is beyond me) is elevated further by some stellar production values.
The sound is across the board magnificent - regular stalwart Justin Hurwitz's score is one of the best in years, a sometimes exciting, sometimes haunting amalgam of period appropriate vintage electronica that heightens or enhances anything it touches. The broader spectrum of sound effects is equally compelling, particularly the clanking, creaking terror of the giant, possibly malevolent, shiny space beasts. The cinematography by Linus Sandgren (his work on La La Land the only high point for me) is notably realistic - often the tranquil beauty of space collapsing into a vortex of impending, furious calamity.
The moon landing itself is of course the denouement, thankfully mirroring the rest of the film's dryness and with an eye for recreating the collective TV experience we all have of that one small step moment in history. I'd love to know who was responsible for the brief moment with Armstrong's daughter's bracelet - it's the only time I felt the ghost of Spielberg in the entire movie.
First Man is a near magnificent biopic but more than that, it effortlessly sidesteps all the pitfalls of the overly heroic, simplistic, swelling, borderline jingoistic film I'd feared and for that Chazelle deserves all the praise. Much was ludicrously made of the failure to include Armstrong planting the US flag on the moon - in these polarized times, one single solitary moment can have an entire section of society write something off as the enemy. This is doubly stupid in a film that never stops being about a heroic and entirely American adventure, filled with nonsense low-key American heroes. Especially as the flag does indeed wave, both on the ground and on the moon. I wonder how Armstrong would feel that so many American's now feel he was nothing but a crisis actor, in some converted warehouse and that his most impossible achievement never even happened.
The two true apexes of this story are not the flag planting anyway but that first step on truly foreign soil, by any living creature we know, and that creature's return to his wife's gaze - both handled beautifully and without embellishment. Spielberg may have been there to guide the young punk through the difficult terrain of a story as important to the American psyche as the moon landing, but after watching something like Spielberg's clunky same-period The Post, First Man makes Chazelle look be the veteran.
8.5/10