A moving tribute to a brave man and country

Rating: 9/10 (14 October 2018)

As someone old enough to know what was going on back when Armstrong walked the moon, I found this movie a gentle correction of what I thought I knew about the Apollo program. The sheer guts it took to mount one of the giant Saturn rockets is made palpable as is the ordeal waiting was for the families on the ground. It really was our finest hour and the director is right to close in on the way it was experienced by the first man on the moon, his friends and his family. Claire Foy as his wife is so vividly captured that I could imagine she was my wife too. That's quite a trick especially as my wife told me Foy's performance made the movie more real for her too.
Ryan Gosling's performance is harder to talk about. Armstrong was not that easy to know despite all the attention he'd garnered after his Apollo mission. He was not that forthcoming. I thought I'd kept reasonable track of events in our space program but it quickly became clear I had missed some relatively important parts of the story. Gosling takes us through the events without imposing any kind of heroic attitude on him. And you do feel Armstrong was probably one those silent guys who was serious and unusually gifted. And that's as close as anyone will ever get.
I found this film moving and artful. It annoyed me that the camera shook early on, but that pretty much stopped fairly soon except for scenes within the rocket which was appropriate because in real life there was terrible vibration.