Butler's Cinema Scene

Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong

“FIRST MAN” My rating: B 

141 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

With “First Man” wonderkid director Damien Chazelle has segued from the high artifice of a musical (“La La Land”) to a soaked-in-realism docudrama.

“First Man” is the story of Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

The creation of NASA, setbacks in the U.S. space program and the eventual triumph of a moon landing  already have inspired the HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon” and films like “The Right Stuff” and “Apollo 13.”

The emphasis from Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer is on momentous events as experienced by one man…and not a terribly demonstrative man at that.

The Neil Armstrong of this retelling is a jet jockey whom we first meet in a near-disastrous sub-orbital test flight of the experimental X-15 plane. Like a lot of guys who risk death as part of their daily routine, he keeps his feelings — both fear and love — pretty much to himself. Whatever  ego he possesses stays hidden…getting the job done is his primary goal.

So it’s a good thing, then, that Armstrong is played by “La La…” star Ryan Gosling, who has the skill and talent to project the inner turmoil of a man who doesn’t give away much.

The screenplay cannily focuses on Armstrong’s most traumatic experience.  It has nothing to do with  ejecting from a crashing plane and being dragged across the landscape by his wind-propelled parachute.

No, it’s the cancer death of  his young daughter, a beautiful child who, thanks to the Chazelle/Singer screenplay, appears periodically to Armstrong’s inner eye, a reminder that no matter his stoic appearance, there’s fierce emotion bubbling beneath.

Claire Foy

Mostly they take a semi-documentary approach, shooting with handheld cameras so that it feels like real events are unfolding before us.

The panoply of NASA hardware is a geek’s delight; the buildup to the big flight slowly tightens tension. Armstrong’s early reputation for being accident-prone seems eerily prescient as he searches for a flat space on which to set down the lunar module, all the while eating up the fuel needed to get back to the orbiting Apollo command capsule.

It’s not all space suits and old-fashioned, pre-digital gauges.  “First Man” finds room to explore the world of Janet Armstrong (Claire Foy), who endures her husband’s lack of communication and holds down the home fort while he’s gallivanting across the universe. The film doesn’t whitewash the relationship…there are moments when the couple seem to be circling the drain. It helps that when Janet shares notes with other NASA wives she realizes that all of them are dealing with the same stolid imperturbability.

The film is packed with familiar faces: Ciaran Hinds and Kyle Chandler as NASA bigwigs; Jason Clarke as astronaut Ed White, Shea Whigham as Gus Grissom, Lucas Haas as Mike Collins and especially Corey Stoll as fellow moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, presented here as something of a pejorative asshat.

Throughout its two-hour-plus running time “First Man” reinforces the idea that these heroes — men who routinely faced death (1969-era technology looks alarmingly inadequate) — were also human beings dealing with fear and loss and a drive to face the unknown.

In its own way, “First Man” may be the most patriotic film of the year.

| Robert W. Butler