First ManGives Humankind’s Greatest Adventure a Personal Touch

For a movie about going to the moon , First Man surely is ground . That ’s a skillful thing though , mostly , as the film provides a layered and at times afflictive feel at what that legendary trip-up cost not just America but also astronaut Neil Armstrong . However , First Man is nota staggeringly loyal roller coaster like Apollo 13 . Director Damien Chazelle has taken one of human beings ’s greatest adventures and turned it into an intimate character portrait . It ’s engaging and emotional , but just the slight bit underwhelming .

First Man , written by Josh Singer from a Word by James R. Hansen , is the story of Neil Armstrong ( played by Ryan Gosling ) who , as we all know , is the first person to ever walk on the Moon . The film starts long before that , though , with Armstrong as an up - and - come pilot and mastermind with a flair for risk who rise through the social status to become an astronaut . From there , the film spends most of its time decease dance step - by - stepthrough the various obstaclesNASA had to whelm before the moon landing — the money it be , the political posturing it take and , most devastatingly , the lives that were lost . Most of us never think about those thing when it come to theApollo 11 missionary station , we just think about the ending . But First Man is all about that journey .

Much of this is see through the eyes of Neil ’s married woman , Janet Armstrong , played by The Crown ’s Claire Foy . She is throw most of the heavy lifting performance - wise , showing a full compass of emotions which contrast with Gosling ’s stoical take on Neil , as the couple pile with professional failures , an too eager jam , and the deaths of many people near to them . Their immensely dissimilar reactions to hardship add up yet another stratum of drama to the film , because it get tension in their marriage .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

Chazelle shows us all of this through a frame that ’s very often in uttermost cheeseparing - up or first person degree of view . He wants us to sense what the characters are feeling or , at the very least , be push to recollect about it . Even when First Man is soar through the stars , the peak of view is almost always close off . So , when a rocket takes off , the camera does n’t give us a fate of boastful , wide dead reckoning of the ship majestically rising through the sky . Instead , the camera stay at bottom with the astronaut , looking out of a small window , showing just a tiny splinter of the bigger pic . That petite linear perspective of a larger scene happens again and again in the cinema , giving the whole thing a fly - on - the - rampart viewpoint on this otherwise larger-than-life story . It ’s all aboutkeeping thing personal .

And yet , those proficiency buck up against a lifespan of conditioning . Everyone has heard taradiddle of whatthe lunar month landing meant to the worldat the meter . It was a grand , unprecedented event . So look out First Man , which is at time a bleak , difficult character survey , there ’s always the promise of this purgative , grand moment on the celestial horizon — and with it , a rarefied glance of happiness for the Armstrong syndicate who has had to deal with so much death and letdown to get to this moment . And while those iconic moon landing scenes are filmed beautifully , especially in the IMAX format , First Man ’s constricting camera work does n’t allow them to line up with our perchance unfairly high-pitched expectations . That high-flown sense of adventure and excitement we associate with space travel and the moon landing place are seldom on exhibit here . Even in what should be its grown , most epic moments , First Man can seem like it has blinder on , and the event is a disconnect between expectations and reality which leads to just a little bit of dashing hopes .

Nevertheless , First Man is a Charles Frederick Worth your clip . It ’s a film that made me realize landing on the moonshine was even more incredible than I ever imagine , and that the people who made the journeying had to go through more pain and grief than I ever realized . And it made me struggle with the head of whether the price the Armstrongs and the other astronaut families pay was deserving it . It ’s a beautiful , complex , clear film that occur to hit ever so slightly .

William Duplessie