FIRST MAN

“One giant leap for mankind.”

Come on, what other quote could I have possibly put there?

The slight downside to biopic films is that there’s only so far you can twist reality before the film you’re making becomes its own entity. That, and they have to based on very interesting characters and events or they just don’t have that much impact. Films like Rush, for instance, are amazing because it’s a tale of two titans of their industry battling it out. Then you have films like Eddie the Eagle that just don’t make that big of an impact because they’re just not as thrilling to watch.

And then of course you come to perhaps the most pivotal moment in recent(ish) history: Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon. Now that there is an interesting character and event. And First Man thrives on it.

Taking place over most of the 1960s, First Man tells not only the story of Apollo 11’s mission to land on the Moon, but all the tests, whether successes or failures, that it took to get there. And that’s the first thing I loved about this film: It times jumps fairly often to fit the needs of the plot but it doesn’t skip anything essential. You need to see where these people started and how the failures they faced along the way lead to that moment at the climax of the film. If you had skipped any of it, the impact of the final victory would be greatly lessened and the film would suffer because of it.

After all, you need to see the failures to relish in the successes.

But there’s something else that really drives this film. It isn’t a space movie. That might sound odd, but it really isn’t. History might have been about Neil Armstrong’s first steps on that big hunk of cheese in the night’s sky, but First Man is about loneliness and loss. The story pretty much opens with Armstrong losing someone very, very close to him and that loss haunts him for the rest of the film. It’s this that makes First Man stand out as a biopic. It doesn’t just tell us what happened and how. It tells us a story we didn’t know and makes the character of Neil Armstrong (I know he was real but for the sake of this paragraph he’s a character) a lot more sympathetic for the audience. He’s often cold and distant in the film and at times it comes off a little harsh, but you can see why he’s like that. He’s lost someone that could never be replaced and that stays with him, culminating in one of the film’s most emotional brilliant scenes right near the end.

Speaking of characters, we come to the leads of the film, Ryan Gosling’s Neil Armstrong and Claire Foy’s Janet Armstrong.

While both leads are brilliant in their own way, what makes them truly great for the film is that they need each other. Gosling’s Neil can be distant and stoic for great lengths of time in the film, and without Foy’s performance bringing some of the more emotional scenes the audience might not have a way in. Don’t get me wrong, Gosling is very good as Neil Armstrong, but it’s the scenes where both are together that shine the most.

Now, I’m a big fan of good cinematography. Having it can make good films great and average films a lot more memorable. It’s the translation of words on a page to the big screen and it’s more important than you might think. And while First Man has some incredible shots, and I really do mean incredible, it’s the film’s use of 35mm that really brings the world to life. The film looks also grainy, not hugely, but enough to make an impression, and it really solidifies that this takes place in the 1960s. It’s not shiny and glossy and bright. It looks like it was filmed on a camera from the time. Until of course we get to the Moon, where the film uses IMAX cameras to bring it crashing into the bright and shiny world of space travel. It’s a small touch that most films set in the past don’t use, but First Man is more than enough of a reason as to why they should.

Shiny and chrome. (Anyone who got that reference can have a pat on the back.)

To wrap up, First Man was exactly the film I was hoping it would be. It’s slow at times but it needs that slowness to set the scene and raise the stakes for a mission we all know was successful in the end. It can be emotional, happy or claustrophobic but not once does the film struggle with this. The tone changes a little bit throughout the film but it always works. The deaths hit you as hard as they should and the tense scenes could not be any tenser. The acting is great from start to finish, especially from the two leads but the rest of the cast are damn good as well. The cinematography is brilliant and is accompanied by one of the most unique soundtracks I’ve heard in a long time. Even the music in this film feels lonely. And, at the end of the day, that’s what the film is about: Loneliness and the search for solace beyond the reaches of the Earth.