First Man

2018 moon movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Neil Armstrong goes to the moon.

Flag lovers get more than a few money shots as the patriotism is surprisingly laid on pretty thickly here. I say surprisingly because there was the hubbub way before the film's release that had the MAGA crowd upset because there wasn't a shot of that flag on the moon, I'm guessing because they wanted to use it as masturbation fodder. America-loving tweeters were ready to burn their copies of La La Land because they'd heard the flag was replaced with all this hippie globalist garbage about an international effort to explore beyond Earth's atmosphere. Indeed, the influence of Armstrong's soundless tap dance on moon dust (because this is a Damien Chazelle movie) is shown in a montage of international broadcasts and interview snippets with people in various places around the world. As a proud libtard, I thought that was a nice touch, and I also liked more brief pandering to the hippie audience with a portrayal of Gil Scott-Heron performing "Whitey on the Moon" and some shots of protesters that might tick off patriots as much as watching the national anthem before an NFL game. Now that I think about it, maybe there is enough here to piss off Americans who really love America. I mean, we didn't actually see a flag planted, did we?

I'll tell you what annoyed me, however. I couldn't care less about the planting of that flag. I'm more troubled that Chazelle didn't show Buzz Aldrin--arguably a more interesting character than Neil Armstrong, by the way, although Second Man probably won't be made any time soon--pooping on the moon. That was what got me into that theater seat. Armstrong might have been the first man to step onto the surface of the moon, but Aldrin, as you might not know but should, was the first man to defecate on the moon. But no, this movie is more concerned showing Armstrong next to a crater with this sentimental gesture to jerk a few tears from the audience than showing what Buzz Aldrin was probably doing at the same time--taking the first lunar dump.

Maybe it'll be a deleted scene on the dvd release? Buzz Aldrin fans can only hope.

Chazelle bounces back and forth between two distinct storylines with the same protagonist. There's the trials and tribulations of Armstrong and his astronaut buddies and their efforts to finally beat the Russians at something. And there's the domestic troubles in the Armstrong household as Neil makes a half-assed attempt to balance work and being a husband and father. I do like that this includes the struggles of being an astronaut's wife as much as the struggles of being an astronaut, but I didn't love how the scenes were filmed. With the space and rocket stuff, you've got a lot of claustrophobic moments and perspective shots where you are forced to look at nothing at all or can't even be sure what you're looking at, and along with a lot of shaky cinematography, you're really placed in Armstrong's astronaut boots. Chazelle shoots the domestic scenes similarly. A lot of the scenes in Armstrong's home look like home video footage shot by somebody who really needed a tripod. I'm sure this was the filmmaker's attempt to match the turbulence of space travel with the turbulence of Armstrong's domestic life, both which whichever-Ryan-this-is stoically works his way through. I just thought it was a little too much and didn't care for the style.

I thought this Ryan (Gosling, I think) and Claire Foy as his wife were both really good in those scenes though. Foy does a lot with her giant eyes to express things that we don't need the character to even say. Gosling gets to cry a couple of times and be stoic most of the time, just like how America likes its astronautic heroes. The other astronaut actors, including Jason Clarke because he has to be in every movie, are fine at acting like tough astronauts, like frightened astronauts, and like astronauts on fire.

Of course, most people watching this movie, unless they're just there to see a flag being planted on the moon, are interested in that space and rocket stuff. It's all pretty great, mostly in how it creates that claustrophobic chaos of space travel. I knew how every single one of these scenes with Armstrong and others in rockets ended, but the cinematography and editing of these sequences managed to have me on the edge of my seat anyway. For the sheer awe-inducing beauty of space travel, I'd still turn to For All Mankind and its real footage, but there were a lot of shots in this that looked like they came straight from that documentary.

It's probably in the quieter moments when this really works. There's music in this movie, but most of the time, I kind of wish the action unfolded sans any score at all. And that's even with the cool use of the theremin. I did really enjoy a musical moment during the trio's trip to the moon after Armstrong passes Aldrin a cassette. But those quiet moments--a first shot of the moon's surface when the Eagle's door is open after it (spoiler alert) lands, a bird flying past the window of a rocket pre-launch, a shot of an astronaut obviously contemplative even though you can't see his face, those footprints, the final shot of the Armstrong couple--are probably more memorable than the more bombastic highlights of Armstrong's trek.

Poor Michael Collins, by the way. The dude's barely mentioned by name in this movie.