First Man review: Ryan Gosling shoots for the moon in Neil Armstrong biopic

Damien Chazelle reunites with La La Land star for mostly soaring, occasionally staid drama about the moon landings – and their domestic fallout

Damien Chazelle hits the key of C major with his visually ravishing, dramatically conservative story of Neil Armstrong, starring Ryan Gosling and adapted by screenwriter Josh Singer from the James R Hansen biography. The first man on the moon and a living embodiment of the American century, Armstrong was the American Adam, without an Eve, without a downfall; an explorer who found his Eden, came back, withdrew enigmatically from public life and lived to see the US and the world lose interest in space travel. Like Concorde, it was a type of futurism that became a thing of the past.

A more questioning or nuanced movie might have placed the moon landing halfway through the story and then focused on the long, mysterious and anti-climactic nature of Armstrong’s life on earth. Chazelle – understandably – makes the moon landing the climax and the glorious main event. It is a movie packed with wonderful vehemence and rapture: it has a yearning to do justice to this existential adventure and to the head-spinning experience of looking back on Earth from another planet. There is a great shot of Armstrong looking down, stupefied, at the sight of his first boot-print on the moon dust, realising what that represents.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PJeG5E