Synopsis
First Man is a biographical drama directed by Damien Chazelle, adapted from James R. Hansen’s 2005 biography of Neil A. Armstrong. The film charts Armstrong’s journey from test pilot to astronaut, leading up to the historic Apollo 11 mission to land a man on the Moon in 1969.
The narrative begins in the early 1960s, as Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling) pilots high-risk experimental aircraft (notably the X-15) and confronts personal tragedy. After the death of his daughter, the film interweaves his grief with the growing pressures and technological challenges of NASA’s space program. Armstrong is gradually drawn into NASA’s astronaut corps, participates in hazardous missions (including the tense Gemini 8 mission), and ultimately is selected to lead Apollo 11. Along the way, the film emphasizes the personal cost of those missions: the danger, uncertainty, loss, and emotional weight carried by astronauts and their families.
Reviews
“Astonishing. The definitive take on a monumental moment in history — without ever losing sight of the man underneath the visor.”
Empire
“Chazelle describes this tale as existing “between the moon and the kitchen sink”, and, like Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, he juxtaposes convincingly evoked Nasa sequences with back-garden scenes of beers and barbecues in which the moon glimmers distantly through the trees. Claire Foy’s Janet Armstrong proves adept at keeping the connection between these two worlds open, even when the live feed from her husband’s spacecraft is cut. While Gosling plays everything close to his chest, it’s Foy who invites us into the unfolding drama with her wonderfully empathetic performance.”
The Guardian
“The sputtering right-wing outrage that erupted after the premiere of “First Man” at the Toronto Film Festival this year was sparked by the film’s “neglecting” to include the planting of an American flag on the lunar surface. Never mind that the flag is basically all over the place in the film, including the moon. Never mind that the griping came from people who hadn’t seen the film (including tweeting-from-the-hip Marco Rubio). What one realizes after seeing the movie is that the kind of gesture represented by the planting of a flag would have been antithetical to the Armstrong who inhabits the film.”
americamagazine.org
How Brian d’Arcy James got his role in First Man
“I got a nice part in a movie called First Man directed by Damien Chazelle. I am a huge fan of Damien Chazelle, and I wanted to do everything I could to get in this movie. They were having a hard time envisioning me for a particular part [as one of] of the M15 pilots. I was doing “Dark Phoenix” at the time, and I talked to the costumer there and I said, “Hey, do you happen to have, like, an Air Force jumpsuit that I can borrow?” And sure enough they had all kinds of things. So I basically got a costume and then I talked to my friend David Turner, who is an actor who happens to be a pilot, and I asked him if I could use his plane to do a little photo shoot of me dressed as an Air Force pilot. Long story short, he was able to help me get a friend of his who owns an airport and who strangely also happens to be a semiprofessional photographer to take a little bit of his day and do a makeshift photo shoot of me standing next to a plane in a fighter pilot costume so I could just show them. “Look, if you’re having a hard time envisioning what I would look like, let me show you.” And it worked! Who knows, they may have made up their minds before they saw those photos, but I just felt like I had the idea and I thought, If I can pull this off, then I’ll do it—there’s probably no chance that I’ll be able to pull it off. But kind of miraculously, I had everything I needed right at my disposal. I thought, I have to do this now, so I did and was able to be on the set and working with the great Damien Chazelle.”
Source: Backstage