Written By: Josh Singer 

Directed By: Damien Chazelle  

I was at a screening in 2015 and an advert for La La Land came on. You know how it goes; girl meets boy, there’s a dance and a song, they seem sexually compatible and love blooms. I turned to my friend and said; ‘Well, that looks apocalyptically shit.’ And yet it turns out to be the biggest commercial and critical hit of the year. What a funny ol’ world.  

Damien Chazelle’s next feature is a world apart from La La Land, both figuratively and literally. While La La Land was all sheen and glitter and choruses, First Man is a brooding film with a surprisingly dark colour palette.  

First Man is the story of Neil Armstrong, the 1969 moon landings and America’s ascent to the summit of Cold War space race. At least, that’s superficially what the film’s narrative is centred upon. In actuality, First Man is concerned with the inner life of Armstrong and his struggle to recover from the grief of losing his daughter to a childhood illness. Armstrong, played wonderfully by Ryan Gosling, is a character defined by death. The death of his daughter, the death of his fellow pilots and the death of his fellow astronauts.  

Naturally, this film contains many great sequences of space flight and the inevitable money shot of Armstrong on the Moon. But the most alien aspect of the film is Armstrong’s inability to express any public or private emotion. His hyper-masculine emotional repression makes the 1960’s feel like Jupiter, let alone the Moon. He cannot discuss his daughter’s death or the death of the many friend’s that die during the lead up to 1969. The male default of internalising all pain or grief, which obviously still exists, is laid bare by Chazelle and Gosling. It is a smart decision by screenwriter Josh Singer to focus on the emotional landscape of Armstrong rather than the boorish politics that informed the Moon landings. Armstrong emotional life seems utterly bizarre and pre-historic, it’s like watching a Neanderthal trying to make a Spotify playlist. We all know men who are still like this, it is often a central reason for the rate of depression related illness in males. But Armstrong’s complete rejection of any emotional vulnerability makes the 20^th century seem much further away than it actually is. The opening sequence of the film is Armstrong completing a small spaceflight and leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, briefly. He is of course wearing a spacesuit, with the customary helmet – a costume he wears throughout the film. The serves as a perfect metaphor for Armstrong’s emotional life; a person trapped behind glass, distant from the rest of the world. 

Armstrong stands in stark contrast to his wife Janet, played by Claire Foy, who is so good I didn’t realise it was her until the credits rolled. She is expressive, open and honest; and while Neil pours his entire life into NASA, Janet pours her’s into her children. Despite occupying a fairly stock female role of a woman waiting in fear at home while her husband does something dangerous, Foy brings so much life and warmth to the character, she rises above it. The standout scene of the film is not the multiple space sequences, but the scene in which Janet confronts Neil about his lack of emotions and refusal to talk to his sons before the Moon mission. It is wonderful acting from both Foy and Gosling, with gripping writing and direction.  

This is by no means a perfect film, I would struggle to describe it as a great one. For all it’s good qualities; Gosling and Foy, Justin Hurwitz’s score, the beautiful silent shot when they finally land on the Moon and Singer and Chazelle’s ability to create jeopardy in a historical story where there isn’t much, there is something lacking. The film is very underwhelming, so muted it sometimes feels like it barely exists. It just kind of rolls along, scene to scene and then it ends. It is a sombre film lacking a spark that really brings the world to life. There is also some poor construction in the scenes in which Armstrong is in space and something goes wrong with the ship he is flying. It is hard to understand what has gone wrong and how they fix it, and these sequences are undermined by poor direction and frenetic editing. There is much to be commended in Chazelle’s decision to move away from the Hollywood gleam of La La Land towards something more thoughtful and real. But you can’t shake the feeling as you watch First Man, that this is Sunday night filler rather than Saturday night prime.  

6.5/10