OVP: First Man (2018)

Film: First Man (2018)
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler
Director: Damien Chazelle
Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Production Design, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Few modern directors I have a more complicated relationship with than Damien Chazelle.  While history doesn't remember it as such (and frequently, neither do I), I actually gave Whiplash a positive review (it got 3 stars on the blog), though I remember thinking at the time it was being helped quite a bit by Chazelle nailing the ending the film, as I'm usually more forgiving of a movie that finds a way to stick the landing.  His follow-up film, the briefest of Best Picture winners (roughly 90 seconds it held the title) La La Land, I was less forgetful in my consideration of it.  While I could admire the beauty of some of the movie, I felt the film was a nostalgic homage that fell flat, stuck in trying to be a Minnelli picture when Chazelle was struggling to understand that genre.  So it seems bizarre to me that First Man, of all things, is the movie where I finally start to warm to Chazelle.  After all, biopics are perhaps the movie I most diverge from critics and audiences on (I am cringing realizing I need to see that new Queen movie thanks to the box office likely propelling Malek to a nomination this year), and Chazelle's he-man, hyper-masculine treatment of his characters (and the way he cannot figure out what a supporting actor does), did not spell out success for my personal tastes, and yet...I really, really liked First Man.  Perhaps it was because Chazelle, saddled with a relatively mundane (though extraordinary) man at the center of his biopic, was forced to think outside of the box office to make this movie interesting, we finally find a journey suitable to prove his talents as a director.

(Real Life Doesn't Need Spoiler Alerts) The film, for those who aren't aware, is about the earliest stages of the space program, specifically the time leading up to Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. The film opens with Armstrong's daughter Karen dying of a brain tumor.  Armstrong (Gosling), famously stoic in real life (many of his colleagues were never aware he had had a daughter who died before she turned three he was so silent on the subject), throws himself into his work in the Gemini and Apollo programs, his marriage frequently suffering as a result, as his wife Janet (Foy) struggles with raising her sons knowing that their father could die at any moment, and that of course she has a partner with whom she cannot discuss her daughter's death.  The film moves through the less familiar story beats of the space program, focusing on the deaths rather than the successes (particularly those who died in the Apollo 1 launch), and the push by Congress/the public to not pursue the space program, as it seemed too costly & they were consistently falling behind the Soviets.  The movie ends with Armstrong coming back from the moon, quarantined but now an immortal figure, silently sharing a moment with his wife after having honored their daughter on the moon by dropping her bracelet on its surface (this isn't factually accurate, though he did name a crater on the moon after his daughter).

The movie easily could have struggled because Armstrong as an historical figure is pretty much what you'd expect from such a man.  While someone like Buzz Aldrin (whose struggles with depression, anger, and alcoholism seems tailor-made for the cinema) is usually at the center of a biopic, Armstrong was always just a boy scout, the all-star, conservative hero who did his duty and tried not to brag about it too hard.  Gosling, therefore, was given an odious task of making Neil Armstrong compelling as a cinematic force, which he does, mostly by letting his pensive demeanor and speaking voice hide the hurt of losing his child, and knowing what it is to become obsessed with a cause, even at the expense of his marriage.  The Armstrongs eventually divorced some 25 years after the moon landing, with Neil remarrying soon after, and you can see in Chazelle's editing choices that he doesn't want this to be a love story, but perhaps more the tale of two people surviving circumstances that would have brought down most others.  Foy and Gosling are both terrific in trying to create a marriage where love is in short supply, but frequently determination and resilience holds things together.

Chazelle doesn't entirely get rid of some of the bad habits of his previous films.  It says something that a character actor as reliable as Corey Stoll is on-hand to play the colorful Buzz Aldrin and Chazelle has nothing for him to do-the director's inability to understand what to do with supporting actors was evident in Whiplash (JK Simmons was a lead character in that movie, so don't cluck) and La La Land, though I will admit its less noticeable here since not only are Foy & Gosling playing essentially lead roles, but so is the mission itself.  Beautifully lensed by Linus Sandgren, the space launches are incredible, particularly the titular moment where Gosling goes on the moon.  With haunting, near-1950's style Sci Fi music playing in the background (Justin Hurwitz is unrecognizable as the composer), we get a wordless opera on the moon, by far the best thing that Chazelle has ever done and arguably the most spellbinding sequence I can recall seeing onscreen this year.  This wonder, aided by strong performances, makes up for Chazelle's glossing past his supporting characters or trying to have a both sides-political argument (it's clear that Chazelle is trying to make a film that Armstrong would have appreciated, ie a conservative vision, and while he skips the planting of the American flag as it would have seemed gauche in the context of the film, this is one of the best "conservative" films I've seen in a long time).  After his first two films failed to impress, I waited a few weeks to review this movie thinking it would age poorly or the flaws would shine through as I got some distance from the movie, but that's not the case.  The movie is great-see it before it leaves theaters if you can.