IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review
First Man [2018] (directed by Damian Chazelle, screenplay by Josh Singer based on the book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) continues a trend in contemporary (here and now) film-making:
If "back in the day" (my youth ;-) NASA portrayed itself as an almost super-heroically serene, supremely competent can-do agency -- "Houston, we have a problem" was literally the phrase used by the Apollo 13 crew to report back to NASA mission control that some sort of an _explosion_ occurred in the Service Module of the spacecraft as it approached the moon. Over the course of the next several days, NASA, chock full of experts, who performed _all kinds of simulations_ on the ground, instructed the crew as to what to do, to get themselves safely back to earth. All this was, of course, immortalized in Ron Howard's, Tom Hanks starring film Apollo 13 [1995].
In the current film, the opening scene portrayed Neil Armstrong [wikip] [IMDb] (played _largely_ still with unknowable superhuman stoicism by Ryan Gosling) piloting the US Air Force's experimental X-15 rocket-plane in a test that put him, then, in 1961, outside the atmosphere, and ... as he sought to bring the plane back down it ... apparently BOUNCED OFF THE ATMOSPHERE ... sending him and his craft, apparently drifting out into near orbit space. What to do? Well, he begins by calmly hitting levers and buttons, and ... NOTHING SEEMS TO BE WORKING and FIFTEEN / THIRTY SECONDS INTO becoming UNWILLINGLY "the first man in space" HE BEGINS TO DO WHAT _EVERYONE OF US_ WOULD DO IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS: He begins TO POUND on EVERY BUTTON / LEVEL IN SIGHT UNTIL ... _SOMETHING CLICKS_ / SOME MOTOR STARTS AND ... he begins to bring the rocket plane down to earth ;-)
THAT opening scene, did its job for me. I was hooked for the rest of the film ;-) [Neil Armstrong, we learn, never flew in the military. He was a civilian engineer. BUT BOY DID HE GET RESPECT FOR WHAT HE DID ON THAT DAY. "He brought an X-15 that was drifting out into space down to earth and lived to tell about it," an admiring military test pilot program commander explained when someone asked WHY Armstrong was picked for the NASA Space Program over presumably some other military test pilot].
And this opening scene was emblematic of the difference between the contemporary sci-fi film-making and that of a generation ago. In the past, everything was portrayed as calm, even frighteningly / monstrously calm -- think of the calm voice of the HAL computer in Stanley Kuberick's 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968], or the tag-line in Ridley Scott's first Alien [1979] movie "In Space no one can hear you scream!" ;-). In the current film, the launch sequence of Apollo 11 was NOT done with Strauss' "Blue Danube" waltz playing in the background. INSTEAD, EVERYTHING SHOOK and at least _inside_ the Apollo 11 capsule THE LAUNCH WAS _LOUD_. Using largely _shaking_ hand-held cameras, the effect to the viewer was experiencing the launch of Apollo 11 as at least _in part_ how it was: like going into space / being attached to the largest fire-cracker / sky-rocket ever built ;-).
Much has been said (usually negatively) of recent attempts to literally "shake-up" / "energize" previous thoughtful / even cerebral storytelling -- one thinks here of the "reboots" of the original Star Trek series or even of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Yet, I suppose here, in the case of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 mission, the "correction" is perhaps, well, "the most correct." THIS WAS an incredibly dangerous mission with ALL KINDS OF THINGS THAT COULD HAVE GONE WRONG. There's an excellent scene in the film showing Armstrong "practicing" the landing of a "best guess" mock-up lunar module somewhere in the Mohave Desert. Let's just say it doesn't go well and one is reminded very well that they were still using 1960s technology that wasn't nearly as digitized, reproducible as technology today.
So I left _really impressed_ by the film, and of the qualities that were being asked of the astronauts in those days. These were _not_ scarves around their necks photogenic prima donna "flyboys." They were literally risking their lives and selected precisely for their ability to keep tremendous internal pressure (to scream, to fly off the handle, to give up) under wraps.
My hat off to the film-makers and the people they portrayed!
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Very interesting movie :) i recommend!
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