If you were to pluck a stranger off the street (a street outside of the current Greater American Co-Prosperity sphere because, let's face it, Americans have kinda utterly lost their minds at the moment, and anyway have never much been interested in anything outside of steroid-fueled millionaire date rapists crashing into each other on TV for points but I digress) and poll them as to the most significant event in recorded history evar, it's not entirely crazy to posit a leading if not the top response would be walking on the moon.
Walking on the moon. Those few, those happy few words (walking on the moon) may well describe the sole moment in history when the entire planet held its collective breath, looked up, and said hey, that's pretty darn cool. Even Yuri Gagarin probably proffered a thumbs upski, the bonds of test pilots and Fourier transforms transcending political ideology even as communists and capitalists were killing one another in southeast Asia.
Yes, I realize Cold War one-upmanship drove the Apollo program as much as oxidant. And, naturally, we must today apologize because it was exclusively a bunch of white guys who did the thing (I hereby officially urge NASA to next time staff their positions with Chinese lesbians or sentient plants or "rappers" if it will get all y'all to climb fully down off your high horse). But that does not change that a human person WALKED ON THE FREAKIN' MOON. The big ball you see outside at night? We decided to go there. So we did.
Shouldn't that be enough? Just this one time, can we agree to bask in the glory of Engineering, and, yes, also, the guys who put their necks on the line, and be satisfied? Is that not sufficient drama for the cinemaplex?
No, Hollywood answers. It is not.
Of course not. We mouthbreathers can't possibly appreciate accomplishment for accomplishment's sake. And so, like Sandra Bullock, Ph.D. (MIT) overcoming overwhelming odds through sheer tenacity in Gravity, like Matthew McConaughey's deliverance of humanity in Interstellar, like countless other lesser fare, the screenwriter of First Man decided the Real Story was about the loss of a child (this being the true story of Armstrong's two-year-old daughter Karen who died of cancer).
Not to be grumpy, but you didn't see Tom Wolfe shackling the Mercury astronauts with ghost children (indeed, the only thing haunting astronauts back then was Chuck Yeager). Ron Howard mostly kept his ham fist off the throttle in Apollo 13 (only mostly though, showing us Jim Lovell's son grimly watching events unfold on TV because, clearly, bachelor Swigert will be mourned by no one). I don't expect moviegoers to grok delta-V or differential equations, but I can't help but feel "people ride things on fire to sky place" doesn't require supplementary pathos to make it relatable. Crikey, anyone who has browsed pornhub understands the raw thrill of exploration.
Doubly frustrating is that copious skill and love obviously went into First Man. From the actors to the visual effects, the sound design to the score, the film hits on all other cylinders. The production team worked hard to get the technical details correct. And Damien Chazelle's tasteful direction combined with Justin Hurwitz's thoughtful score brings a somber dignity to the telling, something like what you'd get if Virgil had written The Right Stuff. There's no blaring nostalgic pop tunes, no bombastic cues at the moment of triumph, no political messages (save for some brief archival footage), and the period set dressing stays in the background. The focus is a difficult and dangerous technical feat and the people who made it happen.
Ryan Gosling's wonderful performance as Armstrong gives us a nerd archetype we have not seen before -- confident but not loud, courageous but not stoic, private but not sullen. (In one memorable scene, reporters grill the crew of Apollo 11 what keepsakes they would take to the moon given their druthers. Armstrong quietly replies "more fuel.") The remainder of the cast also delivers strong performances, albeit not given much to do. Mercifully, no villain got shoehorned into the script (cf. Ron Howard's nagging flight surgeon in Apollo 13). The closest First Man gets to a bad guy is Buzz Aldrin, who says impolite things at inconvenient moments. Saying impolite things doesn't make you evil, it makes you LabKitty. Hence the lesson: A space story doesn't need baddies -- everything about space is already trying to kill you.
Finally, the special effects are out of this world (yes, I went there). If you've ever reflected upon how peaceful a 737 looks crossing overhead after suffering turbulence when riding one, First Man is the closest you will get to replicating the experience on board a Titan or Saturn V. It may be a "lift off" from the outside, but inside it was groaning, creaking, banging, shuttering, pitching, and thrashing, not to mention -- in a docking test flight -- spinning out of control. All experienced while strapped inside a claustrophobic coffin with your only glimpse of the outside world entering through a palm-sized viewport. I watched the film three times in one weekend (yes, all the way to the Gemini 8 Easter Egg during the end credits) and the flight segments remain breathtaking and terrifying.
So why this other thing? One of the film's last scenes gives us Armstrong tossing Karen's bracelet into the depths of Little West crater. There's scant evidence to suggest the event happened. Armstrong never spoke of his daughter. And he took pieces of the Wright brother's plane with him, not a bracelet. Officially, Apollo 11 left a disc of greetings behind (ala Voyager) as well as a small monument to fallen Soviet cosmonauts. Adding this mushy Hollywood cliché does the achievement (and the film) a disservice.
Perhaps screenwriter Josh Singer intended his poetic license as symbolic. I would argue First Man is less about the death of a child and more about the death of America. Apollo 11 was the last time America did Something Big and the world stood and cheered. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. Twenty years prior, a post-war Congress giddy from VJ day had made a covenant with the academics who had brought the country victory. It was a fecund coupling of curiosity and purpose. America invented the transistor. Stopped polio. Explained superconductivity. Broke the sound barrier. And went to the moon. We had all of the cosmic momentum. Not in a mean or selfish way -- anyone with drive and smarts was welcome to pitch in. Their discoveries shared with all, the world lit with reason.
Now, just a few decades later, America is eating her children. We currently spend more on the NFL than we do on NASA, "expert" is a dirty word, and universities have become a punching bag, one of many convenient scapegoats that provide cover while the one-percenters loot everything not bolted down. It's a return to the Gilded Age. Darkness, superstition, barbarism. The rest of us will have to burn what we can to stay warm, starving in the intellectual winter and soon-to-be eternal summer the jackals have called down. Try to be born rich, if you can.
One has only to reflect on JFK announcing the program to feel the difference between then and now:
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.Take a look at the human curiosity currently occupying the White House and tell me the Republic has not fallen.
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