Real life of an icon revealed on screen

“YOU think you know him, you think you know the moon landing.”

That’s according to director Damien Chazelle, whose new film aims to show the real Neil Armstrong under the space suit.

First Man hits cinemas this week and covers his life and the mission that saw him walk on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

And it reveals how the personal tragedy of losing his daughter to brain cancer fuelled his journey to space.

Chazelle explained: “He’s the most famous man almost in history and yet so private and so unknown, someone who suffered such loss and yet is known for such a happy event that united the whole world in a sense of joy and optimism.

“Part of our job in this movie was to shed light on the personal side, try to get to know who the real man was.”

Official

First Man covers Armstrong’s life from 1961 up to the Apollo 11 landing. Armstrong is played by Ryan Gosling and his wife Janet is Brit actress Claire Foy.

It’s based on author James R Hansen’s 2005 best-seller First Man: The Life Of Neil A Armstrong, the only official biography of the astronaut.

He reveals how, in 1962, Neil and Janet lost twoyear-old Karen, nicknamed Muffy, to a brain tumour.

They first noticed a problem when an eyesight issue led her to fall in a park.

Armstrong was at the time a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and his flight logs reveal he took time off to be with Muffy at hospital.

The tot died in January 1962 – the Armstrongs’ sixth anniversary.

“I thought the best thing to do was to continue with my work,” said Armstrong, “Keep things as normal as I could, and try not to have it affect my ability to do useful things.”

He joined Nasa that same year. He went on to have two sons with Janet, before the pair divorced in 1994 after a long separation.

First Man shows the daring missions that not only got the astronauts further into space, but also resulted in the death of three in a fire during a launch rehearsal. The film has been blasted in the States for not showing the scene when Armstrong, who died in 2012 aged 82, and Buzz Aldrin stick the Stars and Stripes flag into the Moon.

Donald Trump called the omission a “terrible thing” while Aldrin tweeted two pictures of it with a series of hashtags implying the film was not suitably patriotic.

Ryan Gosling said:

“I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement and that’s how we chose to view it.”

First Man is released on Friday.