Rent First Man (2018)

watchable but unmemorable - First Man review by PD

Damien Chazelle’s intimate new film takes the conquest of difficulty as its inspiration. Retelling the story of the American space programme from the early ’60s to the Apollo 11 mission through the lens of Armstrong’s professional and personal life, Chazelle (drawing on James R. Hansen’s biography) unfurls a chronicle of setbacks, obstacles and tragedies on the way to eventual triumph. The film is good at helping us appreciate, almost 50 years later, how many times, and in how many ways, the moon landing almost didn’t happen. It's pretty good at restoring a sense of uncertainty of the vast unknown that Armstrong and his colleagues faced, and finds fresh set of images to convey the strangeness and sublimity of those moments at Tranquility Base just after the “giant leap,” so we might intuit at least a glimmer of the awe that Armstrong must have felt (although the music score is just a bland distraction). The rattling din of ascent and the eerie quiet of zero-gravity are also impressively rendered, whilst the fact that space travel, viewed from the inside, could look and feel so much more abrasive and hazardous than we might ever have thought is part of the film's power, the ships creaking and rattling like tin cans in a hurricane, and there's a great, darkly humourous moment just before lift-off when some guy asks for a Swiss army knife to fix something.

Chazelle’s interest in Armstrong is as much personal as historical: bureaucratic snags, political-turf battles and engineering puzzles provide the narrative machinery, but feelings are the film’s fuel. Armstrong’s progress from pilot to celestial pioneer traces an epic arc, and like some of the ancient epics “First Man” is primarily a character study, a space odyssey with a diffident and enigmatic Ulysses at its centre, and his Penelope — loyal, anxious, angry, exhausted — is wife Janet. Neil and Janet’s grief over the loss of their daughter Karen serves as a kind of Rosebud, a half-buried centre of emotional and psychological gravity, a source of motive and meaning. And Karen’s is not the only death to be mourned. Janet sometimes seems to move through her days in anticipation of widowhood, and the progress of the Gemini and Apollo programs is measured partly in lives lost. Even for viewers versed in NASA history, who will know the fates of certain characters as soon as they are introduced, the deaths come as a shock. They are dramatised with cinematic tact, so that what you register is not horror but a sudden, disorienting absence, as if the men had vanished into space.

But the film's centre is its attempt to illuminate the inner life of Armstrong, and this doesn't quite come off for me. It can be hard to tell if Neil possesses an extra-dry wit or if he’s just literal-minded. (When the astronauts are asked at a news conference what they’d like to bring to the moon with them, his answer is “more fuel.”), and he remains an enigma to everyone, including his wife & family. But Chazelle rather lacks confidence that the audience will warm to such a man, and so he pipes in a layer of sentimentality which I found simply irritating.

From time to time, grumbling is heard about the point of it all — the actual Apollo programme, that is, which gobbled up public money at a time of social unrest and military conflict. Chazelle cleverly inserts a performance of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon,” a bitterly satirical protest song, although such dissent is washed away by the sheer sublimity of the astronauts' achievement. But ultimately the film is also strangely underwhelming. It reminds you of an extraordinary feat and acquaints you with an interesting, enigmatic man. But there is a further leap beyond technical accomplishment — into meaning, history, metaphysics or the wilder zones of the imagination, that the film is too careful, too earthbound, as it were, to attempt. So all in all a watchable piece but one, I fear, that won't be remembered for too long.

The best "Space Race" film yet. - First Man review by TR

A great effort at recreating the sheer hard graft needed to get men to the Moon, much, much better than other feeble efforts to get this story off the ground.

A complete disaster of a film - First Man review by JT rentals

Such an outstanding event in the history of mankind deseves much better treatment than this. The direction is awful. Armstrong comes across lacking in any personality, none of the characters are likeable, everything is dark and grubby and the jerky camera work makes it appear that everything is being filmed in the middle of an earthquake. Shots are far too close to give any context of what is going on nearby and the moon landing itself is almost an anti-climax. Overly long and dull, definitely the worst film I've seen this year. Avoid.

Yawn - First Man review by GB

Really quite dull, a couple of dramatic bits and some interesting characters, maybe enough for a good short but not 2h15.

No buzz about this film. - First Man review by kk

Oh dear. Ryan Gosling plays another moody, miserable and humourless guy. There was a lot of waiting for anything to happen in this movie and it never did. If this was a TV presentation I would happily have switched off, but as this was one of my precious 'at home' DVD choices I stuck with it. Should have given up and put it in the post box to ensure I got another film before the weekend.

Spaceman come on down - First Man review by MP

It enlightened me as to the NASA ethos, 'Beat the Russians to the moon whatever the cost', both human and financial.

Makes you realise the sacrifices that were made by all that were involved and at times recklessly to human life.

Could have gone deeper but gives a good insight into the Moon race.

Dull - First Man review by KB

IBog standard American fare.I am surprised by the decent reviews for this uninspiring effort . The moon landing scene was well done but I thought the rest of the film was tedious. They have tried to flesh out the film by looking at the astronauts backgrounds/families but you end up just not caring about the characters .

Gosling won't win any awards for this as he just plays a subdued character ( Armstrong ) who hardly says anything.