First Man

⭐ 9.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

I watched this because it is from Chazelle and has Ryan Gosling and is about space, and those are all my favorite things. I watched it about a week ago and have thought about it often since then. I think this movie is a phenomenal look at grief, masculinity, and that terrific Martin idea that love is the death of duty. I think Chazelle does this great job of taking a story we all know and making it incredibly human and personal. He somehow takes this epic, sweeping narrative and shrinks it down to the conflicts between Niel Armstrong and his wife, and also Neil Armstrong and himself.

So, this movie is actually just like Free Solo, and predictably Tim has the incorrect opinion on both. I think there is a lot going on under the surface, and I think Gosling does this amazing job of portraying a man who is just assaulted with tragedy time and again, and he starts coping with it in very human ways. Armstrong was known as a stoic guy, and you wonder if the nature of his work just forced him to turn it all off. I think this movie does a great job of showing what can happen when a man, who is already prone aloofness, has to deal with immense trauma and danger. His response if often to distance himself and bury himself in his work, and it's portrayed perfectly here.

I also love that Chazelle never makes like, a moral argument. I think that's one of his greatest strengths; asking interesting questions without trying to answer them. Each one of Chazelle's movies nail the ending, and this one is no different. The final shot filled me with a sense of hope and sadness. Shout out to the OG goddess Claire Foy for nailing the role of his conflicted wife.

Aside from all this, I thought the other stuff was all great too. The music, the visuals. As Tim says, this one gives us very little of space, never taking us far from Armstrong's perspective. This is really effective at showing us what garbage technology these guys were working with, helping to create that sense of danger as they fly through the atmosphere in a bucket of rust.

So yeah, I thought this movie was amazing in essentially every regard. I seem to be higher than the consensus on this movie, but I thought it was brilliant. I'm not sure how much I like reading this kind of stuff into true stories, but I thought it was a very cool exploration of a complicated human living in a complicated time in history.