{"id":3471,"date":"2016-03-04T12:55:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T07:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2016-03-04T12:55:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T07:25:23","slug":"first-man-review-neil-armstrong-damien-chazelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3471","title":{"rendered":"First Man Review: One Giant Leap for Space Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

M<\/span><\/p>idway through the masterful <\/span>First Man<\/span><\/i>, its lead Neil Armstrong (a clinical Ryan Gosling) deconstructs the ethos of Damien Chazelle\u2019s biopic of the man who took the world\u2019s most famous small step. At a NASA interview for the <\/span>Gemini <\/span><\/a>programme, Armstrong is asked to articulate the indispensability of space travel. He reveals that it offers a different vantage point and by extension, a different perspective of the universe. \u201cIt allows us to see things that we should have been able to see a long time ago.\u201d Chazelle imbibes this thought and runs with it, giving us a space film that probes the peculiarity of an astronaut who is unable to dissociate obsession with passion, tragedy with triumph, motive with meaning, and journey with closure. <\/span>\n\nFirst Man<\/span><\/i> lets us see films about space the way that they should have been seen long back. More often than not, in a bid to romanticise the elation of exploring the great beyond, <\/span>movies about space<\/span><\/a> tend to be heady, heroic, and theatrical. The astronauts, however, remain merely a vessel \u2013 their inner expeditions reduced to a footnote. The crowning glory of these films is almost always, its galactic destination. But Chazelle<\/span> gives us a different view of this genre: He refuses to define his lead by his impossible achievement. <\/span>\n\nFirst Man<\/span><\/i> isn\u2019t about the mission to the moon. Or even about the moon. It\u2019s a sombre portrait of what going to the moon and back does to a man and his family. <\/span>\n\nWith<\/span> First Man<\/span><\/i>, Chazelle, ever the observant filmmaker, dares the audience to choose whose PoV it wants to keep looking from \u2013 the mission or the astronaut. As the film looks at the moon through the eyes of Armstrong, we\u2019re left to witness details about the man: How he weeps uncontrollably in his study after the death of his daughter, yet refuses to shed a tear every time a fellow astronaut becomes a casualty in their mission to the moon. How his ambition for <\/span>space<\/span><\/a> is interlinked with the distance he has with his family. How he stays out to stare at the sky with childlike wonder, even as his wife gets used to him not looking back at her. <\/span>\n

You see, it doesn\u2019t matter if it is love or the moon: In the end it\u2019s all about the journey.<\/blockquote>\nWe witness the lengths Armstrong might have traversed \u2013 numbed by loss and grief \u2013 in his search for closure. And this is the film\u2019s biggest challenge: to expose the life of a man who would do anything to run away from it.<\/span>\n\nFirst Man<\/span><\/i> is not interested in retelling the glossy \u201cOne small step for a man. A giant leap for mankind\u201d narrative \u2013 Chazelle even foregoes the pride-fuelled moment of the <\/span>American<\/span><\/a> flag on the moon. Instead, the film invests in the intricacies of that \u201csmall step\u201d. Chazelle shoots Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin\u2019s moment on the moon with poetic choreography \u2013 the camera stays fixed at Armstrong\u2019s feet as he takes that landmark step. Yet the bits that stay with you are Aldrin jumping away on the lunar surface and Armstrong letting go of his daughter\u2019s bracelet along with his grudge. The whole sequence is shot with such a dreamy eye (and scored to near perfection by Justin Hurwitz) that it\u2019s impossible not to recall <\/span>La La Land.<\/span><\/i><\/a> In fact, a scene of two spacecrafts docking with each other is eerily reminiscent of Mia and Sebastian\u2019s dance inside the laboratory. <\/span>\n\nIn <\/span>First Man<\/span><\/i>, Chazelle intersperses the actual price of space travel with the personal costs Armstrong had to bear. If <\/span>La La Land <\/span><\/i>reminded us of what it used to feel like when we fell in love without worrying about self-preservation, then <\/span>First Man<\/span><\/i> is an ode to the time where there was nothing heroic about being an <\/span>astronaut<\/span><\/a>. You see, it doesn\u2019t matter if it is love or the moon: In the end it\u2019s all about the journey.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Damien Chazelle\u2019s First Man, a film about Neil Armstrong and his journey, isn\u2019t about the mission to the moon. Or even about the moon. It\u2019s a sombre portrait of what going to the moon and back does to a man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":3472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[6611,1181,4126,6612,309,1745,1183,1373,3953,1788,1185,6613],"class_list":["post-3471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-claire-foy","tag-damien-chazelle","tag-film","tag-first-man","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-hollywood","tag-la-la-land","tag-neil-armstrong","tag-oscar","tag-review","tag-ryan-gosling","tag-universal-pictures"],"yoast_head":"\nFirst Man Review: One Giant Leap for Space Movies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Damien Chazelle\u2019s First Man, a film about Neil Armstrong and his journey, isn\u2019t about the mission to the moon. Or even about the moon. It\u2019s a sombre portrait of what going to the moon and back does to a man.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3471\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"First Man Review: One Giant Leap for Space Movies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Damien Chazelle\u2019s First Man, a film about Neil Armstrong and his journey, isn\u2019t about the mission to the moon. Or even about the moon. 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