Deborah Ross

Hollow man

Perhaps the real Armstrong was this buttoned up. Good for him – but it’s not so good for us

Damien Chazelle’s First Man is a biographical drama that follows Neil Armstrong in the decade leading up to the Apollo 11 mission to land a man on the moon (1969), but while it’s strong on mission, and technically dazzling, it’s weak on biography. Who was Armstrong the person? What made him hell-bent on such peril? Did he fear never returning? As portrayed here, he’s essentially yet another strong, detached, emotionally unavailable man of few words, so this is a set-piece action film at heart. A Mission Possible, if you like.

Unlike Chazelle’s previous two hits (Whiplash, La La Land), the director himself did not write the screenplay. Instead, it’s been adapted by Josh Singer from James R. Hansen’s book on Armstrong. Chazelle wanted a script that was ‘visceral’, Singer has said, and the opening is certainly that. It opens in the early 1960s when Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) is an engineering pilot on a test flight into the atmosphere. He is squashed claustrophobically inside the cockpit as the capsule throbs, lurches, rattles and hurtles violently. The scene from the cramped window goes from black to blue sky then black again as he’s thrust up, down, up. It is thoroughly Dunkirk-ian, as it puts you right there, and it’s so plainly terrifying and so plainly high risk that you will want to know: who would sign up for this? Two hours and 21 minutes later, you do have something of an answer and it’s: one hell of a bore.

The film divides narratively, telling the story of Apollo on the one hand and the story of Armstrong’s personal life on the other. He is married to Janet (Claire Foy) and they’re recently bereaved, having just lost their two-year-old daughter Karen to a brain tumour.

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