Movie review: "First Man"

"First Man" is not the first depiction of astronauts and the Space Race but it might be the most honest. For me the whole of this movie was not as good as its parts. The moon landing was in 1969 and fifty years later our world is a different place. Computers now control space exploration, the communication, engineering, etc.

But in the late 1960's there was none of that. The space mission was fraught with sometimes deadly mistakes. So to see a small team of men who were ready to strap themselves into a very small capsule and take several days to land on the surface of the moon and rely on ground control to pretty much make it happen, well, that was a leap of faith in more ways than we ever knew.

Many of us remember the first landing on the moon. It was surreal because many of us grew up thinking that being on the moon would be the pinnacle of ..... everything. How could a person get there, what would that take and why even attempt it?  What would be the point?

"First Man" skirts around some of those questions but since it is based in the late 1960's and since the space race was predicated on beating the Russians into the outer atmosphere, the mindset was different than we see it today. In the setting of that era, the movie shows how it must have felt then, not how we see it now.

Ryan Gosling is a decent Neil Armstrong. The taciturn characteristics he exhibits are a little too much for this movie, in my opinion. I wanted to shake him at times and ask "Anyone in there?" It's clear he is very intelligent but he has such a disconnect from everyone including his children that it became, for me, a physical flaw, one that I couldn't ignore. Like a scar on someone's face, I was focused too much on his unmoving face and his lack of emotion.

My favorite character was Armstrong's wife, Janet, played by Claire Foy. She seems to understand Neil's sadness (especially after the death of their daughter) and for the most part she can accept it and move past it. But her patience is tested several times and she gives an excellent performance, she is a pleasure to watch.

However, what I really enjoyed in "First Man" was the science behind the moon landing and the mental and physical accuity the astronauts had to exhibit. The actual moon landing sequence was brilliant. The silence of the moon, after the noise and clatter of the space capsule, was gripping in an odd way.

It's a really good movie. Not an A but more like a B+.  Or a solid B, very good but not outstanding.

It's worth noting that the only other movie that one can compare it to is "The Right Stuff" and that movie had the amazing (in every way) Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager and the always smiling Ed Harris as John Glenn and it had that air of hope and exploration that encompassed the early days of the space program. But for me, as much as I really liked "The Right Stuff" I think "First Man" is probably more realistic.  Well, if we could get Neil Armstrong to relax his face once and give us a little, tiny smile. Or a frown. Or something other than sadness and ennui.

But check it out. It's good.