With his third film, the undeniably talented filmmaker Damien Chazelle tackles the story of the first man to walk on the moon, and in the effort to bring his story down to earth, turns him and the NASA Apollo team -- the biggest, baddest, most brilliant rock stars of geekdom -- into "a bunch of boys making models out of balsa wood."
Oh dear. Here we go... It's like half the movie wanted to be in awe of them, and the other half wanted to tear them down and "show them for what they really were." The direction and the writing felt at odds.
My biggest issue is with the treatment of Neil himself. I know next to nothing about him, so I'll try not to speculate too far, but it seems to be that Chazelle's (but perhaps more the writer, Josh Singer's) intention was to humanize his story. To that end the film begins with the death of his young daughter, and Neil spends the next eight years of his life in what is presented as a constant state of depression. His goal of reaching the moon seems dangerously obsessive, yet oddly joyless, and his ultimate success more the result of mere luck than the kind of hard work, training, and discipline it certainly took in reality.
Part of this has to be attributed to Ryan Gosling's deadpan performance, which I'm sure was intended, but ultimately comes across as cold. There are subtleties there, but mostly I found that the filming style created performance out of little substance. Those eye close ups -- they convey an idea of what lies underneath an emotionless stare. However, the character is written to have so much instability that I would worry about NASA's vetting process if I were convinced his characterization were accurate. It's unfathomable to me that having already lost a child, and fully prepared to risk his life, he wouldn't value the chance to say goodbye to his children, no matter how confident he may be of his return.
This is going to sound meaner than I mean it to mean, but I felt equal connection to him when he was standing with his sun-shield up as I did when he was actively emoting. i.e., the film conveyed emotion FOR him, not THROUGH him.
It smacks of sensationalism -- and why not? There's a reason this story hasn't been told before. As magnificent and history-making an event it was, it was simply too by-the-numbers successful endeavor to make a compelling film. So an effort is made to make it seem as dangerous and duct-taped together as possible; even to the point of presenting factual errors and stretching the truth for drama. For his part, Chazelle literally shakes the audience, and goes deep into the visceral experience. Shot on film, grainy, handheld camerawork, high-contrast and glaring lighting; it's nothing if not dramatic. And to its credit this style makes the open and still photography of the moon's surface all the more striking later.
That sequence was by far the most grabbing of the film -- and it was all due to the contrast of filming style. Yet Neil's character has no such moment of contrast. With juxtaposition of highs, his lows may have been more deeply empathized with, yet he's consistently despondent and frustratingly aloof, to the point of returning to the very thing this film ran from: that the man was unrelatable; but it a way that paints him badly -- as immature and anti-social -- instead of the positive if unattainable status he's more deserving of, as an absolute legend of history.
Claire Foy is great because Claire Foy is always great. There has never been a time when she has been less great than she was at every moment in this movie. However, I didn't care for the role her character took in the story.
I know there has to be some who would disagree with me and identified with this character. It is a character piece, and is put on with subtlety and rawness classic to indie sensibilities. It lost me as a character study, however, and the loss was felt because there was no backup to keep me on the hook. As a science-fact space-exploration film, it hardly even tries. I had no expectation to start, but found myself again and again wishing for the audience-friendly science explanations and easy structure of Ron Howard's Apollo 13. That film is the perfect storm of understandable science, balanced characters full of emotional range, and true-story credibility.
It seems almost unfair to compare the two, but therein is exactly my point. First Man intentionally sets aside in-depth explanation of technical aspects to drill deep into the character of one man; and with that singular goal, still fails to capture my affection for that one character the same way Apollo 13 did for at least four characters, while spending half it time as an educational video about how to make a CO² filter out of duct tape and a sock. Still, Chazelle didn't set out to make Apollo 13, but his own creation -- and it is beautiful in his way. There were moments worth the frustrations -- mostly in the visuals which were remarkably great. Despite its failure to capture me, I'll certainly retain a level of respect for the work as a whole.
It's beautiful, and there's value and appeal to that. But it's the kind of value that will diminish and be replaced in time. I far prefer Chazelle's work when he writes for himself. Then the heart matches his style and tone.
First Man is undeniably a visceral, and carefully and artfully crafted film. From a fictional perspective it's handled well, feeling both massively epic and massively intimate. From a real-life perspective the efforts and heroism of its characters seems intentionally minimized. And from a personal perspective, that minimization edges on disrespect, the intimacy lacks attraction, and the epic scope conveys little more than a cool, clouded glance into one of the most impressive and awesome feats of mankind.
This tag converts movie quotes into movie questions, and yes, did require some confessing on my part.
1."Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man." - The Big
Lebowski Your most unpopular film opinion:
That Captain America: Civil War was halfway a terrible movie. I've seen it three times now, and can enjoy it well enough to continue watching it whenever the situation calls for a huge superhero blockbuster, but that's only in spite of the issues I have with it. Seeing it in the theaters it felt like being pelted with backhanded insults for two and a half hours, (read: IT WAS NOT FUN) and as the credits rolled I sat with my head in my hands confused as to whether I wanted to start yelling expletives at the screen or just cry. Yet I wasn't at all surprised when everyone else in the group I saw the movie with (save for my youngest brother who's even more of a film cynic than me, and generally doesn't like MCU movies) absolutely loved it.
STOP! FIGHTING!!!
The problems I had with it were enhanced by the other half of the movie being exceptionally well-done what with all those spectacular fight scenes and a bunch of lovable characters, and basically boils down to this: The plot was painfully contrived, and it forces characters to do things out of their established character; and to cover it up, the film attempts to emotionally manipulate the audience. Feeling like my emotions are being purposefully manipulated while watching a film is probably my biggest movie pet peeve, which is probably why I dislike this movie so much more than most. Check out my review of Civil War here for a more in-depth explanation of my opinions!
2."The limit does not exist!" - Mean Girls A Guilty Pleasure film you can watch over and over again:
I thought about this, expecting it'd end up being some girly flick similar to Mean Girls, like maybe Clueless, which I love; but I realized that all the girly rom-coms I love I don't feel guilty over. The movie I rewatch the most and feel movie-guilt for enjoying is actually Peter Jackson's King Kong. You may say it's a great film and I shouldn't feel guilty over it (or the opposite!) but that's not the point. The 2005 King Kong is my biggest guilty pleasure film -- possibly just because the rest of my family hates it, but there you go. In many ways I think the movie is genuinely an excellent film. The technology used for Kong, the cast, the scenes before the island... it's main problem is the dinosaur chase sequence which did not hold up animation-wise, and it does have that sappy, overly-dramatic tone going on at the end too. That's what King Kong is though, and I really enjoy it. I don't even mind the runtime!
3."Are you not entertained?!" - Gladiator A film that is universally loved that you found boring: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. I'm not sure if this movie counts fully as universally loved, but when I first saw it and found it boring it certainly did seem that way. My brothers and I were all quite bored watching this, and even had a hard time making fun of it's overly serious and depressing tone. Since then I re-watched it alone and was able to appreciate the motion-capture performances of the apes -- mainly Koba, Toby Kebbell, who I was just starting to pay attention to at the time. Recognizing the actors behind the apes was interesting in it's own way, but I still maintain that the movie and its plot is overall very boring, building glacially up to a war that we'd have to wait 3 years to see. (Read my review for more ranting on the subject!)
And even then Koba's dead so who cares?
4. "Sorry! My Prada's at the cleaners! Along with my hoodie and my
'f*** you' flip-flops, you pretentious douchebag!" - The Social Network The most pretentious film you've ever seen:
Oh that's easy: Gravity. As a lover of scifi, I am, of course, perfectly capable of suspending disbelief for the sake of enjoying movies that don't completely respect the laws of this world. Like physics. How. Ever: Gravity gets no such pass, because it was marketed and presented and acclaimed as the most realistic space-set scifi film ever made. And yes, it looks pretty darned realistic -- until their blatantly ignoring the laws of physics and general reality gets in the way! All done, I might add, to propel a plot that otherwise couldn't have made it an inch off the ground. It's pretty, yes, but if you're gonna be that smug over the greatness of your film, maybe make it actually as great as you claim.
For your viewing pleasure: CinemaSins! My biggest issue with this one is mentioned at 2:48, but honestly I agree with them all.
My second biggest issue isn't mentioned in the CinemaSins though. It's actually the scene where Stone is in the ship crying, and the tears drip off her face and float slowly towards the camera. Back to emotional manipulation again, because in reality tears in zero-g will just accumulate on your eye in a bubble, as demonstrated in this neat video:
This fact that the movie did what it did instead of adhering to the laws of reality is evidence that its true motivation was not to be realistic, but simply to market a trite and contrived story under the guise of being groundbreaking in film realism. Read my review of Gravity here for more unrelenting bashing.
5."Draw me like one of your French girls." - Titanic A film that describes your aesthetic:
Disclaimer: I have no idea what "aesthetic" is. I know the proper definition, and I've certainly seen it used as a kind of exaggerated meme, but I don't know what "my aesthetic" is, or how a movie could describe it. So I'm just going with a movie that has a tone and visual makeup that appeals to me. (Which is probably exactly what I was supposed to do!) And that movie is Mud. I won't even attempt to describe the aesthetic except to say the director Jeff Nichols said that he wanted the film to flow like the Mississippi River (an important backdrop in the film) -- and it did. You can read my review of the film here (which I wrote before I fully understood the complete reasons why I loved it) and I'll leave you with a compilation of its cinematography:
6."That's a bingo!" - Inglourious Basterds A director who has never let you down:
Jeff Nichols. It's a high standard to live up to, and the more film's you've made the more likely it is that you disappointed in some way. I immediately thought of him, but then thought there had to be some other director who's done more than five movies who never let me down, but no. I still haven't seen his fifth film, Loving, but even with four he still wins. Shotgun Stories,Take Shelter,Mud, andMidnight Special are not only films that have merely not let me down, they in fact all blew me away in one way or another, and are all among my favorite films. Click the links to read my reviews of each of them!
The posters look so good together too.
7."Don't believe his lies." - Memento A film you were told was bad but you loved:
This one I'm giving a tie because both the movies have the same set of circumstances. The Brothers Bloom, and The Darjeeling Limited; both considered by the general movie-going audience to be the worst movies of their respective directors, Rian Johnson, and Wes Anderson, but are actually my favorites from them. (Though I haven't seen all of Andersons films.) The Brother's Bloom (review) has a few plot holes, but is of a fun and underused genre, is very funny and incredibly charming, has a great cast playing great characters, and (to me at least) is decidedly heartfelt.
(I know neither of these movies are commonly considered bad. This is the best I could do.)
(I just realized both these films star Adrien Brody. I wonder if that has anything to do with anything... .... ...eh.)
For The Darjeeling Limited the biggest criticism I hear is that it has no plot or makes no sense, but that is the appeal of Wes Anderson in the first place for me, and for some reason this one's particular brand of ambiguity resonates rather deeply with me. It does have seemingly pointless moments but also some meaningful ones too, and I like it all. I love watching the relationship of the brothers (oh hey -- both these movies focus on brothers too!) and their journey to find something that maybe they do find, but can't quite put their finger on what it is. For me, it works. Plus I love the music, and it's often hilarious.
8."It's only forever, not long at all." - Labyrinth If you could only watch one film for the rest of your life, what would
it be?
I'm gonna go with The Lord of the Rings trilogy on this one because I can get away with it counting as one film. Extended editions too, of course. Obviously if I could only watch one movie the rest of my life I'd want it to be a long one so it'll grow old more slowly, but really, if I could only watch one movie for the rest of my life I would spend a whole lot more time reading. In which case, I might pick The Way Way Back (review) because there's no book version of that.
But no -- let's not get complicated -- Middle Earth wins.
9."Were you rushing or were you dragging?” - Whiplash A long film you thought was perfectly paced:
To be honest I like long movies, and as long as I find the plot or the characters interesting I'm hard to bore. So how about this: It's technically a mini-series, not a film, but the 1995 Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth. It's five hours long, and so well structured that I cannot leave the room for even two seconds without pausing it to prevent my missing anything good. Read my enamored review here!
"You can never get a film long enough, or a bowl of popcorn large enough to suit me." -- Me, plagiarizing C.S. Lewis a bit.
10."As you wish." - The Princess Bride Your film dream team. (Directors, writers, genre, actors, music,
whatever.)
Right now, after a bit of daydreaming, I would like to see Damien Chazelle write and direct a scifi noir film. I love the genre mashup of noir and scifi, and I think he absolutely had the ability to capture the right tone. His movies have a palpable energy to them and I'd love to see how that marries with subtle and dark tones like that of Blade Runner, Dark City, or Gattaca. The music could be jazzy since he likes that.
And because I've been noticing and enjoying these two a bunch lately, it should star Toby Kebbell and Vanessa Kirby. Neither of them get many leading roles -- that is to say, almost none -- but I absolutely think they have the talent for it, especially if the characters are not your typical leading types but more character-types. I bet Kirby could pull off the mysterious woman/possibly femme fatale excellently, and I know for a fact that Kebbell can do that hard-boiled-but-surprisingly-soft-on-the-inside type.
Since it's a Chazelle film it should have J.K. Simmons in an important supporting role too. Something for him to have fun with, or surprise with. It could be set in space, or the distant future, or just an alternate reality altogether; and I'd probably prefer if it focused mostly on character and intrigue, but had some good action in it too. With all those elements in place there would be no way the movie could disappoint me.
Now I'm depressed because it won't never exist!
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I got this tag from Kyle Gaunt -- check out his YouTube channel here, and follow him on Twitter @kg_moviereviews! And if the tag seems fun to you, don't hesitate to participate! I suppose you can actually tag people if you want, but it's more of a loosely-structured thread. I hope you enjoyed reading my answers and weren't offended by my opinions which are definitely the only right opinions to have! Just kidding -- leave me a comment and tell me where I'm wrong! Or if you agree. Or just your thoughts in general. Thanks for reading!
