Technically marvelous

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2018)

So Damien Chazelle had Ryan Gosling dance amongst the stars in La La Land. What higher place is there to reach next but the Moon.
Gosling is first man Neil Armstrong, a pilot picked for the Apollo 11 mission that had it's fair share of hiccups as well as triumphs.
The movie itself is made up of mostly those tests- watching the pilots as they rattle and spin in high speed simulations and practice pod launches, sometimes at the mercy of technical equipment that does not hold up.
To it's credit there is a dizzying effect here. I haven't felt this nauseous in a movie since Peter Berg's Mile 22, though here the effect makes way more sense.
When the pilots wind up puking you understand where they're coming from and you have a new respect for their calm as well as ability to even remain conscious.
By far Chazelle's best feat is the moon landing itself, something as nerve racking as everything else in the film but also done with meticulous detail and moments so triumphant it almost feels like you're watching them in slo-mo. I could not look away.
There are references to the space race and to American Patriotism, it doesn't change the fact that they kind dropped the ball the iconic image of planting the flag on the moon. To me it kinda felt like following your favorite sports team only to see them not hoist a trophy.
It's also hard to gauge the public's interest in all this. Chazelle briefly looks at that but mostly seems to make us think there were far greater interests in Vietnam and Civil Rights.
Later, the public seems to can't get enough of it though. It's a movie that feels very verbatim about the mission, sometimes to the film's detriment.
Gosling is very good here though. It's not a very showy performance, Armstrong was in actuality a very stable ordinary man, emotionally distant, but humble and loving in his own way.
One thing the film does really well is show the amount of deaths he actually endured and the quiet, secret suffering he went through during those periods.
Claire Foy is great here too as his wife, the only person who seems even moderately interested in asking the tough questions, like what if the mission completely goes to crap.
And we don't get much of the relationship between Armstrong and Corey Stoll's Buzz Aldrin but what we do seems as stand-offish as what we've heard.
Overall First Man is a chronicle. That means it can feel long, it can feel too concerned with the facts, but technically as well as performance wise, this hits on the trials and successes of space exploration really well.
If you like this, check out Craig James Review on Youtube for more