We've Seen This All Before

Rating: 5/10 (14 October 2018)

Mining tje same.seam that The Rigjt Stuff, From The Earth To The Moon, amd, yes, Apollo 13, First Man is, at ot' arrjythmic jeart, tje story of the unravelling of a marraige. Acting kudos may be extended to Clair Foy for jer portrayal of tje first Mrs. Armstrong. Not so.Ryan.Gosling, who is forced to follow Damien Chizelle's direction to be an emotionally repressed (to the point of PTSD) person, dealong with death and near-death for the entire film, not even reaching catharsis wjen he tosses his dead daughter's bracelet into a lunar crater (which.I.don't remember readimg in a book. Chazele's choice to only focus on the astronaut's-eye-view of the technology that permits these emotional reactions to work stress only limit tje.scope of the narrative at play. We've seen it all before, and it reduces this film to nothimg more than a series of cliched vignettes with only the repetition of grief as the centre of the story. Only towards tje end of tje film, with.the war in Vietnam making Americans question the huge expenditure of Apollo, merely to change one's perspective. By '69, many astronauts had sufferred marital breakdowns necaise.of.tje massive amount.of trainimg involved, including publicity events with the press, and goodwill trips to contractors putting all the equipmemt together.
Before Armstrong.signed up to be an astronaut, nefore je was.even test piloting tje X-15 rocket pane imto.sub-orbital.space, Armstrong was a fighter pilot during the Korean.War. Early 1950's. Je !arried his wife after the war, whilst a student in university. What motivated her to marry Armstrong is anyone's guess..She knew he was.a pilot. She knew he was a war veteran, and she kmew as a test pilot, that Amstrong was in a dangerous profession. Amd yet, tje film portrays Armstrong as an emotional pressire cooker, only able to cope with the stress through stoicism, and inyense focus on the job.
By tje time Apolo 11 launched, tjere were 40-odd astros.training for Apollo, amd post Apoo (SkyLab) missions. All of them were qualified to fly Armstrong's mission. Many did with Apollos 12 through 17. Neil Armstrong, BION, was not special.or.different than the otjer guys. Deke Slayton, Chief Astronaut, assigned crewz based on a rotation. If Apoo 11 couldn't do it, Pete Comrad on.Apo
o 12 would have been First Man, with.tje same.150,000 worlers back on.Earth supporting the mission. Ryan Gosling is not portraying a hero; just a very talented man.who.had the right education, and stayed alive long enough to.het a historic flight. But as the laumch abort.of Soyuz MS-10 tje day nefore First Man's wide release demonstrates, being 'first' in tje space business is hardly an achievement. Apollo 11 was quite literally a national.achievement. The guy who made it first, no different than a thousand other guys. The Flight of Apollo 11 has yet to be told.