An Ode to Theresa

There once was a PM called May,

Who proved to have feet made of clay.

She said, "I won't budge

Despite how hard you nudge,"

But we'll see by the end of today...

WordJam Review: First Man (d. Damien Chazelle, 2018)

Three weeks ago, the world watched with baited breath as the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft was forced to make an emergency landing after experiencing booster failure. Once it was confirmed that pilots Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague were safely back on terra firma, media outlets across the globe did what they do best, and dutifully dusted off stories about the fatalities and near-fatalities of Soyuz-1, Apollo 13, Soyuz-11, Challenger and Columbia in an attempt to feed the public's collective imagination about the perils of space flight.

Considering this remarkable event occurred just two days before First Man was due to begin its theatrical run, one might safely have assumed that Damien Chazelle's latest offering would be flying high at the box office right now. (If anything, timing has been central to this film; not only has it been released at the tail-end of 2018 to act as a kind of flagship event for the moon landing's 50th anniversary celebrations next year, the fact that it's opening at the start of the awards season suggests the high hopes Universal have for its success at the 91st Academy Awards in February.) With this in mind, it's strange that the film should've fallen $9 million short of its projected $25 million North American opening weekend gross. Various factors have been suggested, including the 141 minute running time and the emphasis on character drama above fist-pumping spectacle, but these speculations are somewhat suspect considering the success of similar, more cerebral 'epic' productions in recent years such as Interstellar and The Revenant. Could it be, then, that the much discussed American Flag 'controversy' really is behind this apparent under-performance?
 

Putting aside for a moment the enormous scientific achievement of the moon landing, for almost half a century now we've been conditioned to think of Apollo 11 as a political slam-dunk for the United States. Turning to the present time, whether or not you agree we're currently engaged in what some pundits have referred to as 'Cold War 2.0', it's undeniable that tensions between East and West are the highest they've been for a good 40 years. Furthermore, it's becoming increasingly apparent that a second Space Race, this time based on economic competition rather than ideological conflict, could be just around the corner. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, recently accused the Pentagon of hiding payments to Elon Musk's SpaceX to price Russia out of the space launch market (the company in question allegedly charging $40-50 million per launch while receiving upwards of $150 million from the US Department of Defence to cover the full cost). If this is true, it neatly undercuts the US's current reliance on Roscosmos to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. Then, of course, we have the Trump administration's proposal for a Space Force, which Vice President Mike Pence has said will counter "threats" from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran in what Defence Secretary James Mattis has described as a "developing, war-fighting domain" (contrary, it should be noted, to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967). In another incredible piece of timing - the day after First Man opened - Trump appeared at a rally in Richmond, Kentucky, and claimed that Russia and China currently have a head start on the US in establishing their own Space Forces, which is why he's so keen to sink $81 billion of tax payers' money into this new initiative. (It goes without saying, he neglected to mention that both the US and Russia already have their own Space Forces: the former was merged with STRATCOM in 2002, while the latter was recently integrated into the Russian air force to become Aerospace Forces.) Whichever way you look at it, First Man was always going to carry the baggage of the past as well as the assumption it would shine a light on today's increasingly polarised world.

The fact is, though, Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer have delivered a film that has absolutely no interest in engaging with the politics of the Cold War or the geopolitical situation today. True, there's a scene where Deke Slayton (one of the Mercury Seven astronauts, who later became NASA's inaugural Chief of the Astronaut Office) explains to his recruits how the USSR's achievements with Sputnik, Laika and Yuri Gagarin have left the US in the shade, but apart from a brief reference to Werner von Braun and astronaut Ed White's anger at Alexei Leonov beating him to conducting the first spacewalk, that really is all we get. These references aren't heavy-handed or pointed in any way; they're just there, and clearly designed for us to take them or leave them if we so choose. This is ultimately why Chazelle chose not to show the flag being planted on the moon's surface: instead of First Man making a statement about American Exceptionalism, it celebrates the Apollo 11 mission as an achievement for all humankind, and one that built on the work of the pioneers who came before.

This approach is admirable, and if the filmmakers' decision to adopt a politically neutral stance is the reason why North American audiences haven't been so to eager to flock to theatres then that's deeply unfortunate. It must be said, however, that the nobility of this gesture does have a detrimental effect on the film's narrative. By underplaying the political climate of the Cold War, the film never quite reconciles its depiction of the feverish urgency to get a man on the surface of the moon with the actual event itself. A couple of days before I went to see First Man, a good friend told me she had no interest in watching the film because she expected it to be another case of "white man does stuff, everyone applauds." Almost anticipating this attitude, the penultimate act, so to speak, features a recitation of Gill Scott Heron's poem "Whitey on the Moon" set to images of Civil Rights activism and protests against the Vietnam War. It provides some historical context, yes - but as with the aforementioned references to the Soviet Space Program, it doesn't really engage with the period. As a result, when Armstrong finally descends from the Eagle module and surveys, in Aldrin's words, the "magnificent desolation" of the lunar landscape, it's tempting to write the whole scene off as an anti-climax because it doesn't feel as though it's earned our investment over the last 120 or so minutes. It's almost as though Chazelle is embarrassed to invest too deeply in the subject matter for fear of an imagined reprisal.

 

Other critics who've picked up on First Man's curious emotional detachment have posited that it's as a result of Ryan Gosling's portrayal of Armstrong: a man who was, by all accounts, a reserved, softly-spoken individual who found it difficult to express his feelings to friends and family. Admittedly, there are times when this sense of the character being so locked into himself makes it almost impossible to read his reaction to events - most notably the tragic deaths of the Apollo 1 crew, which we see harrowingly (but tastefully) dramatized here - but then the film also takes great care to flip this on its head to show Armstrong as a more complex human being than his placid, outward appearance would suggest. Two scenes in particular stick out here: the first being Armstrong's private grief at the loss of his daughter Karen, and the second when his wife Janet practically begs him to explain to their children there's no guarantee he will return from the lunar mission. Chazelle and Singer pitch these character beats, and others like them, at exactly the right moments in the drama so we don't mistake Armstrong's emotional aloofness with the false image of the stoical, all-American, square-jawed hero of lesser biopics. What we're presented with in the end is a man whose sense of duty, both in his home life and working life at NASA, is borne out of a silent yet palpable vulnerability that subtly informs every frame of the film.

 

 

It must be said, though, that if there are scenes where we struggle to identify with Armstrong, we find a recognisable, emotional counterpoint with his wife Janet, beautifully played by Claire Foy in a performance that I for one would certainly like to see recognised by the Academy when the January shortlist comes around. Comparisons between First Man and Apollo 13 are ultimately pointless because both productions use contrasting styles to tell different stories, but consider the way Jim Lovell's wife Marilyn (portrayed by Kathleen Quinlan) is presented in Ron Howard's film. She's the dutiful wife and mother who loves her husband and supports his work, but that's it as far as her character goes. With the exception of a completely unnecessary and wholly manipulative nightmare sequence, at no point do we see her express any measure of concern for her husband's safety or the well-being of their family prior to the ill-fated mission. (This job is taken by Lovell's infant son, who, without wishing to sound facetious, seems to have a precocious talent for coaxing exposition-heavy, emotionally-wrought dialogue out of his father.) Even when Marilyn's listening in to the NASA radio link with the stranded Apollo crew, all she's required to do is sit there with her hand over her mouth and occasionally hold her daughter close. Foy, on the other hand, plays a fully-rounded character. She asks the right questions (which, to be fair, are there to help facilitate exposition, although Singer's screenplay does a good job of masking this), reacts to unfolding events in ways that don't short-change our emotional intelligence by going directly for glib sentiment, and generally presents us with an independent, multi-faceted character who seems a lot more 'real' than the supporting nature of her character would have a right to be in any other production. Foy carries Janet with dignity and grace, never leaping on a line that makes our job of deciphering her thought processes just that little bit easier, but searching for nuance that resonates long after we've left the auditorium.

 

To be fair, it's in these masterful performances we see the hand of the director at work. Chazelle's exploration of the contrast between public and private worlds through the oppositions of extravagance and sparseness - fast becoming a visual and narrative trademark - is still there, but the emotional resonance is more finely tuned. Consider, for example, the opening scene where we find Armstrong in an X-15 hypersonic plane as it rattles and creaks while tearing through the upper-reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. Note the way we cut between tight close-ups of the pilot, his POV out of the cockpit window and a long-shot of the aircraft. We're not just there with Armstrong, we join with him: the camera bridging his interior world with our near-objective view of the physical reality as the roar of liquid nitrogen thunders in our ears. As the film continues, we constantly shift between viewpoints, whether it's Armstrong's perception, those of the people around him or our perspective, allowing us to walk alongside these characters as they attempt to achieve the impossible or take a third-party view of this moment in history.

 

 

When I heard about First Man this time last year I was deeply sceptical what the end result would be. I am willing to admit, however, this was purely a knee-jerk response to the news that Chazelle was at the helm. To his credit, he is a competent, perhaps even talented filmmaker, but Whiplash and La La Land seemed me to be the work of a director far more interested in superficial homage - or mimicry, if I really wanted to be unkind - than exploring his own creative impulses. (Besides, it's almost criminal how he's been lauded for borrowing stylistic techniques people such as Stanley Donen and the late, great Albert Lamorisse pioneered over 60 years ago.) On this occasion, stripped of his cinematic makeup box, Chazelle has delivered a film of great integrity and intelligence that sees him growing out of his adolescent need to bask in the shadow of other people's achievements and find his own place in the sun. (Although, it must be said, the wonderfully executed Gemini 8 docking scene does owe more than a small debt to 2001: A Space Odyssey... Mind you, which space exploration film doesn't?)

 

Nevertheless, First Man is not quite the film it should've been. It isn't cold or wilfully oblique in the way that, say, Kubrick's or Tarkovsky's great space epics are (which, ironically, makes them thoroughly engaging), neither is it overlong or too bogged down in Armstrong's personal life to sustain interest - but its unwillingness to take that extra leap of faith and position itself both in the period it's depicting and in the here-and-now makes it easy to dismiss or brush aside as just another biopic about just another guy who did something really extraordinary that we've all heard plenty about over the years. Perhaps this is the real reason why audiences haven't quite greeted First Man with open arms: not the flag, not the falsely perceived 'anti-American' bullshit, but because it's a story we already know - or think we do. I just hope this lukewarm reception doesn't spill over into the 50th anniversary celebrations next year. No matter what the popular feeling is today, the past is just as important as the present, because without it we can't move forward into tomorrow. And that's the truth, folks.