Review: First Man

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Less a character study of Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, Damien Chazelle's film "First Man" is more of a first-person perspective of what it must be like to ride a rocket into orbit and hurtle through outer space. Chazelle's film - which follows his trio of music-related films, including the Oscar-winning "La La Land" - is a technical triumph, featuring intense and realistic depictions of space travel, all the while keeping the film's emotional elements more subtle.

As the picture opens, Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) loses his young daughter, an incident that reverberates throughout the rest of the years in which he works with NASA to help launch the first trip to the moon. There's even a touching coda involving this storyline when Armstrong actually lands on the moon. In the film, Gosling plays Armstrong as emotionally reserved, but it's in the moments involving the astronaut's daughter that his performance pays off most.

"First Man" is a film that concerns itself with technical detail and a large number of its scenes are trial and error runs in which Armstrong and his fellow astronauts - including Patrick Fugit, Jason Clarke and Corey Stoll as Buzz Aldrin - attempt not to pass out in simulation machines and shoot themselves out into space and try to safely navigate home. Tragedy strikes more than once and viewers might be surprised to learn that more than a few participants in the early days of the space program lost their lives during trial runs.

Neil's wife, Janet (Claire Foy), displays more emotion than her tight-lipped husband. Strolling feverishly throughout her home or the halls of NASA, Janet appears constantly worried and frustrated about Neil's safety and, during a peak moment of frustration, tells him that he must notify their two young boys that he might not return home from the moon. "You're just boys," she tells Kyle Chandler's Deke Slayton, who supervised the men involved in the launch, after he attempts to assure her that NASA has things "under control."

Although the film relies heavily on the technical aspects of the mission, Chazelle and company allow some interesting period details to creep in - especially during a scene in which Neil and his fellow astronauts' preparations are intercut with scenes of regular folks complaining about the cost of the space program, all while a young African American man leads a song about racial inequality on the ground as white men view their opportunities in the stars.

"First Man" may be light on emotional resonance - although the final moon landing and Neil's iconic words regarding a "giant leap for mankind" are certainly stirring - but it is strong in portraying the technical wonders involved in launching a men into space and landing on the moon. Chazelle's previous films were all about the emotion involved in the creation or performance of music, but his latest is one that admires craft. It's a solid entry into films about the American space program and it's often visually spectacular.