The following is a movie review “First Man” by Marc Primo.
Release date: October 12, 2018 (United States)
Director: Damien Chazelle
Language: English
Production companies: Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Temple Hill Entertainment, Perfect World Pictures
Producers: Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, Isaac Klausner, Damien Chazelle
In First Man, Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle and Ryan Gosling team up once again following their 2016 Academy Award-winning smash hit La La Land. While that movie explored the dichotomy between good and bad in Hollywood, with a soaring soundtrack to boot, the pair’s latest collaboration is a motion picture that literally soars skywards and beyond the earth’s atmosphere to go where no man had ever gone before.
Based on the book by James R. Hansen, First Man is a biopic told from the perspective of Neil Armstrong between 1961 and 1969. During that nine-year period, the film delves deeper into the life of Armstrong than most documentaries have ever gone, examining the personal and professional struggles he encountered.
Thanks to Academy Award-winner Josh Singer’s masterful screenplay, Chazelle is able to deliver a powerful historical drama that is as much a human meditation as it is an antithesis to science fiction blockbusters.
If there were any downside to First Man, it would be nitpicking to say that Gosling could have perhaps exhibited a little more depth and emotion, considering the nature of the role he was playing. But after doing a quick mental casting call as to who might have portrayed the first man to land on the moon better, nobody came to mind—or at least nobody in Hollywood today who would fall into the same age demographic as Armstrong in the film’s period.
Overall, First Man succeeds in telling the story of a highlight in the American space program for a new generation, much in the same way as The Right Stuff and Apollo 13 did for the children of the ‘80s and ‘90s, respectively.
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