We think of the first man on the moon as a fairly distant history, and we may also think of this Chazelle Gosling collaboration as possibly a dry scientific docu-like drama. I have never seen a movie that captures space flight with a degree of authenticity like First Man. It leaves the ground and soars into space with terror, beauty, unpredictability and majesty. So there is nothing dry about this movie. It makes this ‘one small step for man, one giant step for mankind’ less history and more real life, about real people, real sacrifices, real hopes and real fears.
In this time and age, seeing the cramped interiors of NASA rattling rockets with analog dials and archaic-looking control panels, it seems incredible that the Apollo missions succeeded at all. Using the latest in filmmaking today to portray a dated look and feel, Chazelle captures with eerie adrenaline and dread just how dangerous these death-defying missions were. That these harrowing and exhilarating flights into space were undertaken by human beings. At a time when pioneering astronauts were almost guinea pigs to rocket scientists.
