Dramatic horrors of space travel
FORGET Star Wars. Forget Star Trek. Don’t even think of light speed or warp speed. The concept of space travel here is the equivalent of snail mail (what’s that?) in an era of WhatsApp. This is an outer space voyage back in the good old 1960s. No, don’t even think The Jetsons or 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Jokes aside, First Man is a biographical drama of celebrated astronaut Neil Armstrong and his gruelling ascent to eventually become the first man to walk on the Moon on that fateful date of July 20 in 1969.
But it sure looks like deadly serious business. Emphasis on deadly!
The usual comforts of space travel that viewers take for granted are all missing here.
Right from the beginning in 1961 when he’s flying the hypersonic rocket-propelled X-15 plane for Nasa, which bounces off the atmosphere, it’s a risky, shaky, noisy, claustrophobic and disconcerting ride.
Later in the movie, he’s seen ejecting just in time when the skeletal experimental Lunar Landing Research Vehicle that he loses control of horribly crashes in a giant explosive blaze in the desert.
Things don’t get any better along the way as the viewer is constantly reminded of the real dangers of the space programme, aimed at sending a man to the Moon, with the gruesome deaths of several other chosen personnel for the mission.
Ironically, this pushes Armstrong to the head of the line for the job which leads him to command the Apollo 11 spaceflight that saw him and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin finally walking on the Moon.
But even then, he barely survived in a prior proving trial, via the Gemini 8 manned spaceflight mission.
That saw him abort the operation when his craft spun out of control after successfully docking with a target vehicle in Earth’s orbit.
Spaceflight. Hard. Got it.
Although the horror-inducing action sequences are thrilling, thanks to American-French director Damien Chazelle’s (of Whiplash and La La Land fame) tight and edgy camera work for the ultra-confined spaces, the film’s heart lies in the inner space of Armstrong and his wife Janet.
Played with great restraint by Ryan Gosling, the actor delivers a pensive performance of the famous figure that also sees him dealing with grief.
He’s on a mission to be a part of something much bigger than himself but is also haunted by the death of his young daughter.
His desperate search for a cure, to no avail, has him burying himself in his space mission, which sees him going through a slow and quiet unravelling.
Each critical moment has him reminiscing about his daughter Karen, which leads to a climactic and dramatic sequence, where he eventually let’s his pain go. This, in the dark, cold and isolating vastness of the Moon’s desolate surface environment, accompanied over the horizon by an equally black sky.
Symbolic and ironic, it’s existential angst the size of an en-compasing Imax screen.
Back on Earth, his wife, played by Claire Foy, has to hold the family together and deal with the agony and stress of not knowing if he’d survive.
One memorable scene is where she forces a reluctant Armstrong to face his two young sons and have “the talk” with them the night before he heads off for his historic space mission, to let them know that there’s a chance he might not return for good.
The movie also touches lightly on other things that were happening during the period, including whether the space programme was something useful, amidst demonstrations against sending men to the Moon and fears of wastage of taxpayers’ money.
It was after all a space race with the Russians back then during the now-defunct Cold War.
Whether you actually believe in the moon conspiracies or not (which suggests the Moon landing was manufactured in a studio), First Man is a dramatic movie, “based on actual events”, that will make viewers look at space in a different light.