First Man: That's 3 Strikes, Chazelle. You're Out!

First Man (2018)

Directed by Damien Chazelle

Screenplay by Josh Singer

Based on the book by James R. Hansen

Rated PG-13

        Well…Damien Chazelle, the overpraised millennial auteur, is back with another Oscar contender…I suppose it was inevitable. This time the Oscar contender in question is First Man and as the title suggests it’s about the struggle to get Neil Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling) on the Moon and how the race to get there affected him and those closest to him be they co-workers or family. And I can safely say walking out of it, the big question I had was how it was possible for Chazelle to take a subject as fascinating and vital to American history as the Moon landing and the journey to get there and make it a chore to sit through.

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It’s not like I got my hopes up for this movie given how enthused I was about his previous work. I hated Whiplash and to this day struggle to wrap my head around why La La Land is considered a good musical. But I was willing to give him another chance and this time he didn’t write the screenplay, so I thought he might craft a better…NOPE! Chazelle just made another film along the same lines as his previous works and left me convinced he was the wrong choice for this material.

As usual, I will get the good out of the way first. The film looks fine and does display the technical prowess of  Chazelle and his team. It is competently filmed and edited, the sequences involving the space flights and tests on the ground are fairly engaging especially when we are in the cockpit of a test plane or in the capsule of a spacecraft with all the shaking and uncomfortable rattling and bumping sounds as if everything could come apart at any moment. There are a couple of dramatic scenes that do work such as the one where Neil’s wife Janet (Claire Foy) demands that he talk to their sons before he leaves for his historic mission as there was a possibility that he may not come back. And the performances from the cast are decent with the best of the bunch being Claire Foy. With what they had to work with, they did a fine job.

        Well that was fun. Let’s get into Gosling’s portrayal of Armstrong, shall we? For a film that is focused on his experiences going through his training, his family life and ultimately his mission to the Moon I didn’t learn anything about this guy. This film takes a real-life hero and turns him into another one of Chazelle’s suffering protagonists. In Whiplash, Andrew was a bland jazz drummer who sacrifices happiness and his personal life in pursuit of perfecting his skill of under the tutelage of the worst college music teacher ever And in La La Land, Sebastian works to become a Jazz musician at the expense of his romantic relationship with Mia. Now in First Man, Neil Armstrong is a stoic workaholic who is single-mindedly devoted to his work much to the annoyance/dismay of his wife, kids and friends/colleagues.

        He portrayed in such a manner that the audience is never given a chance to really get to know him. At the beginning of the film, we see him and his wife go through the death of their daughter Karen and throughout the course of the film we see him have flashbacks and other kinds of visions of her from time to time. At the end of the film when he is on the Moon, we see him with tears in his eyes letting go of his daughter’s bracelet and watches it float away. I suppose it is supposed to mean that by working as hard as he did and getting that far he was finally able to let the pain go…Again I suppose that was what it was supposed to mean since there is no is really no indication of this given via dialogue or through Gosling’s performance. How did his daughter’s death motivate him to work so hard and did the death put a strain on his marriage? I guess we will never know the answer to those questions. Also, the inclusion of him letting go of the bracelet on the Moon feels added in purely for drama. If that happened in real life, then fine. But even if that occurred, it doesn’t really work since we don’t see how that would motivate him if at all.

        Leaving aside the thing with the daughter, we don’t get close enough to the character to in other areas. What other interest does this guy have? Janet implies he was different from all the other guys in college when she is talking to a neighbor. In what way was he different? What other qualifications does he have to go to the moon apart from his smarts shown from the beginning and his ability to maintain his cool under pressure? What are his thoughts on his mission to the moon? Is he happy to represent the United States on such a historic endeavor? Does he enjoy going to outer space? How does he feel about the mission after he returned to Earth? Look I can ask questions till I am blue in the mouth, but Chazelle is not interested in exploring any of them and that is surprising given that Neil Armstrong is the topic of the film. Imagine if Martin Scorsese made The Aviator without going into Howard Hughes’ OCD and other eccentricities or Mel Gibson making Hacksaw Ridge without going into why Desmond Doss wanted to go to war as a combat medic without ever carrying or firing a gun. They wouldn’t be as effective, would they?

        It’s not just the portrayal of Armstrong that I have a problem with. The portrayal of his wife Janet comes across as questionable. Does she really support her husband’s work in the space program? Sure, she gets worried about him when other test pilots die in accidents and such as any wife of an astronaut would be. But as the film progresses, she seems to become more and more disapproving of his involvement and it doesn’t seem to be just because of the dangers involved. Is it because she resents his workaholic nature as presented in the film? His lack of communication with her? She states she married him because she wanted a normal life. Didn’t she marry him because she loves him? Even if she didn’t expect their life together to take a turn toward the space program and going to the Moon, doesn’t she feel proud of him getting that far in any way? It just seems that she gets more annoyed than worried about Neil as the film goes on. By the end when she can visit him while he is in quarantine, she doesn’t show any happiness or relief that he made it back in one piece. She doesn’t seem to show any emotion on her face whatsoever. It kind of makes one wonder why she would stay married to him if that is the attitude she takes.

        One more character I would like to point out is Buzz Aldrin played by Corey Stoll. I’m not sure how he was in real life back in the day but if this film is anything to go by he comes off as rather insensitive when it comes to talking about test pilots’ deaths and such. Again, this is a character that could have been explored along with Neil as he was in the lunar landing craft with him and the second to walk on the moon.

        As far as the real-life Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and others go, I obviously never talked to them or met them in any way, so I can’t attest to anything written in the book that this movie was based on. Also, I never read the book, so I am just going by how they were portrayed in the film and their portrayals are disappointing. So much so that I wonder why they didn’t tell the story of the Apollo 11 from multiple different perspectives (such as switching back and forth between Neil, Buzz, Deke Slayton [Kyle Chandler], and others) if they weren’t going to do the titular first man any justice. They kind of do that in the film anyway but I felt more switching between characters should have been done since they did so little with Neil Armstrong.

I understand that Chazelle’s intention was to more or less focus solely on Neil Armstrong and to kind of put the political implications, national pride and such in the background. OK that could have been effective if we (again) got to know him. But since that part of the film failed resoundingly, not looking at the societal implications of the time is a missed opportunity. We get some of that in news conferences when the astronauts and NASA heads are asked by reporters about whether the expenses and the loss of the lives of astronauts and test pilots are worth it. We even get vintage news footage of hippies, random folks and even Brave New World author Kurt Vonnegut expressing their skepticism of the space race and wanting the money spent at NASA to go toward improving society and such. It would have been interesting to see how all that would affect those who work at NASA and could have led to some good drama (movies based on historical events do these all the time) about having the astronauts strengthen their resolve to get to the Moon. Granted this would have created a different movie than the one Chazelle crafted but it would have been more interesting.

I stated at the beginning that I don’t believe Damien Chazelle was the right fit for the material. At the time of this writing, Chazelle is only about 33 years old and that makes him roughly close to my age (he’s about 3 years older than me) and he clearly didn’t grow up during the time of the space race. I’m not saying that being a millennial automatically disqualifies him from making a film about Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 mission, but he wouldn’t have the same understanding of the time that it all took place as someone like Philip Kaufman with his film The Right Stuff or Ron Howard with Apollo 13.

I am aware that there likely was a ton of historical research and interviews from people who lived during the Cold War era, important people at NASA or Armstrong’s family prior to filming but I really doubt Chazelle managed to convey the anxiety of the times in which the Apollo 11 mission was being planned and the impact it had in US history. Making the decision to focus on Neil Armstrong, or rather, the Neil Armstrong as portrayed under Chazelle’s direction is a huge miscalculation as it makes the Moon landing seem very “meh”.

I would go so far as to say that Chazelle’s creative decisions in this film illustrate his failure to convey the spirit of the era given the disconnect between the period the film takes place and the time when he was born. Millennials such as Chazelle (and myself) have no idea what growing up during the Cold War was like. We don’t live in a world where we compete with another superpower for military dominance, we don’t live in fear of mutually assured destruction via nuclear weapons or engage in a race to beat the Russians to space. Even if Chazelle did have a passion for NASA space missions during the 60s and for Neil Armstrong’s accomplishments, I would never guess that by watching the film we got.

The film doesn’t promote the Apollo 11 mission as a human achievement as opposed to an American one. Nor does it promote an anti-American agenda but with its approach to the subject of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 mission we’re not really given anything. It comes off like a film that neither wants to praise American exceptionalism nor condemn it. Also, would it have killed them to show a small clip of Neil and Buzz planting the flag on the Moon? Sure, the controversy surrounding that omission may have been a touch overblown but come on. How much more time and money would it have cost them to film that?

First Man, as with Damien Chazelle’s other works, is a frustrating sit that will probably win tons of awards. Heck, a lot of the major critics are already hyperbolically stating this as the movie of the year, a cinematic masterpiece and other increasingly meaningless praiseworthy words that critics love to throw around at award season. If anyone wants to see this, then I obviously can’t stop you. But I would recommend you stay home and watch The Right Stuff, Apollo 13 or even…you know what? Why not? Check out the 1987 anime classic Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (pronounced O-NAY-AH-MEESE). While that one is entirely fictional, it is definitely more involving dramatically than anything you will see in First Man and that one did a better job of showing the highs and lows of prepping for space travel and the societal implications that happen in that world and you understand why the protagonist Shirotsugh Lhadatt would pursue being the first man in space in that fictional world. I guarantee you will have a better cinematic experience with any of those.

In Whiplash, Chazelle failed to convey why Andrew would put up with abuse and risk ending up alone in pursuit of perfecting his drumming skills. In La La Land, he flat out failed to make a good musical with charming characters and great music. And now in First Man, he failed to make a compelling biopic. If I may use a baseball saying… Strike Three! You’re out Mr. Chazelle!

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