Even an appalling accident, in which several of Armstrong’s friends are killed, is presented in a low-key manner, reflecting his restrained reaction to the disaster. The only exception is Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong’s partner on the voyage, who is depicted as a rather vulgar chatterbox. In addition, with the focus being almost exclusively on Armstrong, the other mission members aren’t sufficiently developed and remain marginal figures. There are many drily factual scenes about how a spacecraft is launched and about astronauts’ training but as one who’s technologically challenged, many of the terms and procedures passed me by and proved somewhat wearisome. I appreciate what Chazelle has tried to do in “First Man,” though I didn’t always find the 142-minute film an easy viewing experience. '22 July': An Almost Feel-good Message About Norway neo-Nazi Massacre.
Theme of man on the moon movie movie#
Through his helmet we even see, though with difficulty, not entirely sure we’re seeing right, what seems to be a tear flowing from Armstrong’s eye as he makes that gesture. Though others dismissed such anger, it’s not a trivial oversight in the context of this picture (in which American flags are in fact on view), the more so because Chazelle replaces the famous patriotic gesture with one that’s related to Armstrong’s personal family story. Perhaps the most extreme example of this approach is the director’s decision not to show one of the most memorable moments of Armstrong’s short sojourn on the moon – his planting of the American flag in its soil – a lacuna that has infuriated many viewers of the film. The movie even includes a performance of Gil Scott-Heron’s protest song, “Whitey on the Moon.” In fact, the whole world was following it (the television broadcast of the landing was, up until then, the most-viewed mass event ever).īut what interests Chazelle is not the collectivity, but the individual who experienced the event on which the whole film is centered. That’s surprising, as the event reenacted in the film swept all of America, which by then was fed up with the vast spending on the space program. The difference is that the opening of “La La Land” was packed with people, whereas “First Man” focuses on one individual, setting the stage for everything that follows. What probably brought this to mind is my sense that the opening sequence parallels the first scene in Chazelle’s previous film, “La La Land,” where one long shot fashions a musical segment set during a Los Angeles traffic jam. As the plot progresses, and his involvement in the project intensifies, that difficulty insulates him increasingly within himself and distances him from his wife and children. According to the film, at least, he wasn’t able to express emotions. Moreover, it’s served up in a casing of dry emotion, deriving from the character of the protagonist. In many ways it’s a paradoxical film that fuses technology, of the aviation and space variety, with sentimentality – not an easy combination to pull off. In any event, it isn’t the heroic, patriotic cinematic spectacle we might have been expecting. I don’t know whether this accounts for the tone chosen by the director to tell the story of the first person to tread on the moon. This is a movie, after all, in which an actor, Ryan Gosling, plays Neil Armstrong, who spoke the iconic sentence, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” So, if the event can be reconstructed in a movie studio, it could just as easily have been faked.
Will all the wackos who believe the moon landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 never happened, but was fabricated in a studio, calm down after seeing the portrayal of the touchdown on the moon and the first human steps taken on it, in Damien Chazelle’s new film, “First Man”? Of course not.