Ryan Gosling’s First Man is flawless

IGNORE the overblown controversy surrounding this incredible movie because you’re going to love every minute of it.

IN A word: Flawless.

Damien Chazelle’s biopic of Neil Armstrong, starring Ryan Gosling, is a stunning film where everything works in symphony.

From the superlative performances to Chazelle’s ambitious vision, and the care and attention infused in every frame, First Man is one of the most accomplished films to hit our screens this year.

Often, in grand historic moments, the individual’s story is what’s overlooked and Armstrong, being the taciturn type, was notoriously never an over-sharer — not with his family, not with his friends and certainly not with a demanding public.

Perhaps that’s why First Man feels like such a privilege to watch. This beautiful, profound portrait of the man behind those famous words gives us a sense of the emotional prison Armstrong had trapped himself in, and what he was able to achieve despite it.

Which makes Gosling — an actor who can be a cipher, low-key and interior in his performances — the perfect person to play Armstrong, giving away just enough with a glance, a gesture or what’s not said to convey everything.

The correct casting of Armstrong was so essential because it’s such a personal story, the journey of this man from 1961, testing X-15s for NASA, to when he returns after the monumental Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

A personal story within an epic event

Marked by a personal tragedy in the early scenes of First Man, the film follows him from applying for the astronauts program where he meets compatriots including Ed White (Jason Clarke), Elliot See (Patrick Fugit) and Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler), a former Mercury pilot who oversaw the astronauts at NASA.

It goes on to cover the Gemini 8 mission with David Scott (Christopher Abbott) to that moment that meant one thing to the world and something else to Armstrong.

On the home front, Claire Foy, as Armstrong’s wife Janet, is also incredibly engaging. She’s in a constant state of wondering if he’ll come home when many other astronaut’s wives have had to face terrible news. There’s a scene towards the end that will undoubtedly be used in Foy’s inevitable Oscar nomination package.

Armstrong’s course is one that’s marked by success, failure, tragedy and near-misses, including the Gemini 8 mission, his experience of which is captured by Chazelle with extreme intensity.

With First Man’s focus on establishing a near-unbreakable emotional connection between Armstrong and the viewer, Chazelle uses extreme close-ups from the first frame, cleverly keeping you within Armstrong’s physical space (and therefore his mental space), but especially in the claustrophobic confines of those space shuttle capsules.

Claire Foy is undoubtedly headed for the Oscars

It happens throughout the film but the thrilling, nerve-racking Gemini 8 sequence does this the best. We only ever see what Armstrong and Scott see, the tiny blue dot of the Earth visible through a window smaller than those on modern commercial aircraft. It they can’t see it, we can’t see it.

It’s through that same window we see the flames burning off, the atmosphere whizzing past with the vertigo-inducing shaky cam and excellent sound design (every creak of the strained metal, every laboured breath) vividly painting the confusion, the fear and the sheer unknowableness of the endeavour.

This particular sequence, but, really, every minute of this movie is an extraordinary technical achievement by Chazelle and his team, including cinematographer Linus Sandgren and composer Justin Hurwitz, both of whom collaborated with the director on La La Land while Hurwitz also worked on Whiplash.

First Man is an extraordinary technical accomplishment

And as it’s fast becoming a Chazelle signature, who at 33 years old already has a Best Director Oscar and three outstanding films under him, First Man’s emotional climax will affect you in ways you may not have predicted.

As Hurwtiz’s orchestral score kicks in, it’s emotionally crushing.

When you experience that moment on the moon, when you understand the character’s through-line, you’ll see that the flag controversy was a completely overblown scandal that had no reason to exist other than that in America’s political climate, anything you can make partisan hay out of will be made partisan hay.

(For the uninitiated, the film was the subject of a deranged attack by some, including Donald Trump, for being “un-American” because it didn’t show the flag planting.)

You have to wonder if Buzz Aldrin landing on the ridiculous side of this so-called debate had anything to do with the fact that his depiction in First Man, where he’s portrayed by Corey Stoll as an arrogant prick who wasn’t liked by his compatriots.

Maybe don’t tell the hardcore flag critics that Gosling is actually, shock horror, a Canadian.

The thing about First Man is that despite its subject, it’s much more a personal story than it is another space adventure. The film does place it within the context of the space race against the Soviets, the volatility of Congressional funding and the wider historical implications, but it’s Armstrong’s story that’s most important.

For an industry that’s been obsessed with showing the ingenuity, ambition and perseverance it takes to send man into space since Georges Melies’ Trip to the Moon 116 years ago, it’s marvellous that Chazelle has managed to make an epic story feel so intimate.

First Man is an extraordinary and affecting movie.

Rating: ★★★★★

First Man is in cinemas from Thursday, October 11.

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