First Man Review - Intense, Personal and Heart Breaking

Suhansid Srikanth

After watching First Man, when I was reading about the film.. I was speechlessly surprised as I came to know that the film didn't use any blue screens or green screens. All the space sequences in the film were shot by creating it within floors. We have seen space in so many films before.. but like a never before, First Man hits in creating and transcending the ambience of celestial vacuum to the audience.

The film, ever since it is announced was known as the biopic of Neil Armstrong's. But Damien Chazelle is not interested in leading the stepping moments to the big victory. He approaches it as a colossal tragedy surmounting with failure after failure. Here is this man who has gone through so much in his personal life yet holding himself together to realize a nation's perhaps the dream of the mankind.

Ryan Gosling as this man who internalizes so much beyond what one can hold within is terrific. The constant feeling of lost and pain in his eyes and smile is arresting. The moment he drops the one thing he hoarded to all this while (in memory of his daughter) on moon will haunt me for all my life. So will be the end shot of him meeting his wife again.. finding himself back. It reminded me the end of Robert Bresson's 'Pickpocket'.. "Oh, Jeanne, to reach you at last, what a path I had to take."

The treatment the film has is itself a very different experience to take in. It is not the conventional American Space Sci-Fi mood. There is a Terrence Mallick like approach to the happy times of the family. It comes in vignettes and flashing moments. The parallels of a family moving to a new place with Neil shifting careers from a pilot to astronaut is wonderfully carved out.

Unlike all the space films, the cinematography is not a visual spectacle. The camera poignantly captures life and emotions on the screen. "Let's forget about all the rules of classical cinema and imagine we're a fly on the wall, carrying a camera, running and gunning with these astronauts." This is what Chazelle has told Sindgren as a brief to approach the film. And how insightfully it has been executed.

Linus Sindgren's cinematography is quietly breathtaking. There are no jaw dropping shots. But they are achingly humane and personal. We don't cut to the speeding rocket leaving the atmosphere or the slow moving space craft in space. Instead the camera vigorously jiggles the throbbing face of Neil everytime a Test happens. When we see Neil crying, the camera is upfront close to his face making us choke with the pain he suffers. After all the struggles.. failures.. explosions.. falls.. the first time the door of the space craft opens, shutting the momentum created by Justin Hurwitz's score to the humongous silence of moon.. it is truly one of the greatest of cinematic experiences one might have on big screen!

Bottom-line

Damien Chazelle's FIRST MAN is a heartbreaking personal story of an astronaut who internalizes all his pain but never gave up on a dream that gave the entire mankind a giant leap!