Here’s What Critics Are Saying About First Man

Author: Rachel Withers / Source: Slate Magazine

Space! Now that I’ve got your attention, the reviews of Damien Chazelle’s First Man, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, today are in—and fortunately, like the film itself, there’s really no way for them to spoil the ending.

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The space drama follows Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) in his literal and metaphorical journey to become the first man on the moon.

It’s a story and a genre we know all too well, but this doesn’t hold the film back—it even improves upon its galactic forbearers. Critics agree that the story is masterfully handled by Chazelle, who mixes realism with reverence, without overblowing the drama.

And of course, it’s simply an irresistible opportunity to employ space metaphors, whether that’s about “soaring,” “sky-high expectations,” “slip[ping] the surly bonds of earth or “shoot[ing] the moon.” (Michael Nordine at IndieWire wins this space race: “Chazelle is an adept flight commander, guiding the action with the elegance of a space dance in one scene and the intensity of a rocket launch in the next … It may not be a giant leap for filmmaking, but it’s another small step for this filmmaker.”)

Here are the first impressions of First Man, which opens on Oct. 12:

Chazelle overcomes the vast challenges involved in telling a story in which the audience knows the ending.

You already know how “First Man” ends. It’s been nearly half a century since man walked on the moon, and nearly as long since space exploration was at the forefront of America’s collective imagination, which is to say that Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to “La La Land” has more challenges to contend with than it might initially appear. They’re easily overcome: “First Man” is an anti-thriller of rare intensity.

Alonso Duralde, the Wrap:

Those of us born in the late 1960s and beyond have always taken the Moon landing as a great accomplishment, yes, but also as something of a fait accompli. In his dynamic follow-up to “La La Land,” director Damien Chazelle reminds us that space exploration has always been risky and terrifying…. “First Man” depicts the great accomplishments of NASA as huge gambles; like the best historical dramas, the film creates suspense over events whose outcome we already know.

We’ve also seen a lot of space movies, but First Man blasts away its forbearers.

“First Man” bears the same relation to the space dramas that have come before it that “Saving Private Ryan” did to previous war films. The movie redefines what space travel is — the way it lives inside our imaginations — by capturing, for the first time, what the stakes really were… “First Man” is so immersive in its glitchy, hurtling, melting-metal authenticity that it makes a space drama like “Apollo 13” look like a puppet show.

The notion of how frightening it must have been inside those space capsules has been explored before, most notably in “The Right Stuff,” but Chazelle takes us further; when Armstrong climbs into Gemini 8 and it blasts off into the heavens, we’ve never felt this claustrophobia or listened to the creaking of the metal or felt the thrust of the rockets quite this way before in a movie.

The film is intensely atmospheric from its opening moments…

It begins with a flight sequence so intense you’ll find yourself thinking — or at least hoping — it must be some pre-mission anxiety dream, with Neil Armstrong’s (Gosling) rickety deathtrap ascending higher into the atmosphere than planned before falling back to earth… The sound is deafening, the view dizzying. It’s an arresting opener, not least for the ways it instantly reminds us that this is indeed life or death: Apollo 11 may have been a success, but it was preceded by many lethal failures. Space Force notwithstanding, we tend not to look at the night sky the way we used to; Chazelle restores some of that wonder.