Summary
5 tech score
“First Man” (Universal Pictures)
Every year there is a movie that held up by the top critics as the movie of the year. It seems more often than not I disagree with that assessment. I certainly did not love and/or respect “La-La Land” and “Moonlighting.” I was more impressed with “The Greatest Showman.” This year all of the critical hysteria appears launched towards “First Man”, director Damien Chazelle and star Ryan Gosling’s follow up to “La La”. Once again I was not impressed.
It has been a while since I have seen such a cold, sterile film. I do remember feeling the same way about “Phantom Thread” as I left the theater after viewing it. “First Man” takes on of the most heroic stages of our history and gives us a mechanical rendering. We get to see the testing of a variety of equipment used in the preparation for the mission to the moon, as well as the daunting task of being the human guinea pigs in this project. However we do not get to see the emotional toil it took on these men or their spouses and friends. It is as if every possible emotional moment has been wrung out of the script and the performances.
Ryan Gosling stars as Neil Armstrong, the “first man” on the moon. This person comes across as one of the most uptight, stoic individuals to ever live on earth. He does not communicate with his wife, children or friends with anything more than clipped, abbreviated thoughts which keeps him at arms length from them all. Was he good at his job, oh yes, except when it came to the public relations part and there he was a disaster. He was aloof and mostly silent.
As his wife Janet, Claire Foy portrays a tense, high strung person who lives for her children and their well being. Her relationship with her husband is strained to say the least and precarious to say the most. The scenes of the two of them together are tense with very little communication going on. Janet’s tenseness comes through also in the way she chain smokes one cigarette after another.
The day to day effort to get a man to the moon are shown in great detail, too much detail. We get glimpses of Armstrong’s co-astronauts but the emphasis is on glimpses. There are no full blooded characterizations shown. Plus the intricate shots of how the space hardware works are interminable, broken up by a hundred close ups of Gosling’s face in the space helmet. At a running time of two hours plus some of these shots should have been edited out.
The film is rated PG-13 for profanity and suspense.
Chazelle appears to have been aiming to make a dark, detailed film about the realities of the moon landing. This of course led to his determination not to show Armstrong planting an American flag on the surface of the moon. That might have put more emotion into the movie than he wanted.
There is good acting in the film. Gosling and Foy play their stolid roles with expertise. Still the overall effect of the movie is to be solely educational, and for me that is not entertainment. A better director could have made it both.
I scored “First Man” a spaced out 5 out of 10.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
I totally agree. The film was too long and with a true hero’s story about space exploration, you would think it would be a cinematic dream. I understand that the director wanted to emphasize the human story over the spectacle, but the direction was horrible. Full of too-close ups and documentary style herky-jerky camerawork. I wanted to see what was happening to the Gemini spacecraft during its spiral, instead it is all about Ryan Goslings reactions inside. Having the outer shot mixed in would have brought the audience in to understand the extent of that crisis. The other astronauts were treated as supporting cast to Armstrong, either making snide comments, or following Arnstrong’s lead.
It would not have surprised me if the last line of dialogue in that film had been “I want a divorce”.
No emotion. Oookkkay. Neil shutting himself away from his family. His wife trying to hold the family together when knowing he could die at any moment. The impact on his children in terms of having a father who isn’t really there. Not going to mention his daughter. Yeah ok no emotion.