First Man and the Distorted Shape of Heroism

An Essay. October 30, 2018

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A very wise film producer once told me that ‘competence is inherently un-cinematic.’ To competently do your job without fanfare is a quality that cannot be filmed in a compelling way because, in film, the need for drama overrules all other concerns. This was the primary dramatic problem facing filmmakers when they approached making First Man (wr. Josh Singer/dir. Damien Chazelle); that extreme competence isn’t inherently dramatic. After watching a movie like Avengers: Endgame (wr. Christopher Markus And Stephen MeFeely/dir. Anthony and Joe Russo), where Robert Downy Jr. sacrifices himself to save the … ahem … multi-verse, how could someone who is merely competent hold a candle?

Perhaps First Man illustrates the point that the people who actually accomplish things are very often not the showy front men like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or even Thomas Edison. Few entertain the possibility that their breakthroughs might have been the result of them usurping the credit for someone else’s genius. I’m certainly of the mind that Steven Wozniak and Paul Allen might have more to do with the success of Apple and Microsoft than they are often given credit for. But no one is making movies about them. I certainly don’t feel that Steve Jobs is such a compelling figure that he warrants being featured in no less than four major motion pictures. (1)

It would never occur to some filmmakers that maybe the reason Steve Jobs so hard to figure out is because they’re diving way too deep in a very shallow pool. After all, this is a man who, after finding out he was dying of cancer, bought the world’s ugliest luxury yacht and went back to work. Despite his reputation, this doesn’t sound to me like someone who contemplates the meaning of life with much depth.

It’s interesting to compare First Man to previous efforts in the same genre; works like Apollo 13 (wr. William Broyles, Jr./dir. Ron Howard) and The Right Stuff (wr./dir. Philip Kaufmann). The thing I loved the most about these movies was the way the characters did heroic things with nothing but determination, smarts and a lot of taxpayer money. No super strength or muscle-bound fury. No ‘powers’ acting as a deus ex machine that just happen to solve exactly the problem the movie faces. Both directors Howard and Kaufmann had the ability to recognize the awe-inspiring achievements of these space pioneers and somehow made that come across on screen. Certainly, both have been accused of simplistic storytelling, but too many people conflate simple with simplistic. In fact it could be argued to mean the polar opposite. An efficiently told story is hardly simplistic.

The thing I loved the most about these movies was the way the characters did heroic things with nothing but determination, smarts and a lot of taxpayer money.

Chazelle certainly doesn’t feel like the obvious choice for such a project, but Universal and Dreamworks thought he might bring a different take on the subject. I can’t really say I enjoyed Chazelle’s previous directorial efforts wringing impossibly overwrought drama from very thin subject matter, like in Whiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016). Bringing such a heavy dramatic hand to already dramatic material risked poisoning the stew. If Hollywood has learned nothing else from the legendary film-maker Steven Spielberg (who helped produce the film), it’s that the elegant simplicity of an efficiently told adventure story can be a huge money-maker. I understand Clint Eastwood was originally set to produce and direct the film, from on an unpublished script based on First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen.(2) I would be happy to pay twelve bucks to see that movie.

To be sure, Chazelle is not Clint Eastwood, nor is he Ron Howard. There was little chance he would produce a blockbuster on the level of Apollo 13. The problem with comparing First Man to Apollo 13 was that the mission in Apollo 13 was a failure, with those very circumstances proving the drama that would be missing in any cinematic depiction of Apollo 11. The story of Apollo 13 revolved around a group of very competent men who were dealing with a near-impossible but clearly defined problem. And even though we know how the story ends, the drama comes from seeing exactly how the problems were solved. Unfortunately for First Man, there was no real problem to solve as the mission went smoothly.

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At first glance, First Man would seem to be a perfect fit for Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, a template over-used and sorely abused by filmmakers since George Lucas used it in Star Wars: A New Hope (wr./dir. George Lucas). But Neil Armstrong (played with infinite emotional reserve by Ryan Gosling) could never fit into such a simplistic template. If Armstrong had a hero’s journey, it happened long before NASA and the space program even existed. In the field of aeronautics, he was already a legend. He was never plucked from obscurity, but had always been a top choice for the moon program, his track record leaving little doubt in his ability to fly the mission and deal with whatever problems might arise. There was nothing of the outsider/saviour in his story. And the results were a vindication of the administration’s faith in his abilities.

The same applies to Apollo 13, where Jim Lovell (an authoritative Tom Hanks) is not in any way on a transformative journey of heroism. The hero template was shattered the second Jack Swigert (played with cocky absurdness by Kevin Bacon) flipped the switches that stirred the oxygen tanks and destroyed the service module on the space craft.

Nor were the seven astronauts of the Mercury program portrayed in The Right Stuff.  Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), John Glenn (Ed Harris), Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid), Gus Grissom (Fred Ward), Wally Schirra (Lance Hendrickson), and Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin) were designated American heroes long before they actually flew in space.

The biggest problem for the filmmakers of First Man was that the Apollo 11 mission went off almost exactly to plan. (3) With no doubt of the outcome, the director was left with no inherent drama built into the event itself. To tell only that story would have required a ton of expository dialogue explaining what could have gone wrong but didn’t. This left the writer and the director with little choice but to focus on the inner conflict of Neil Armstrong, which is no small feat when you consider a character as humble and reserved as Armstrong. To dramatize this internal struggle made it necessary to delve into his personal life, an aspect of Neil Armstrong that is admittedly dramatic. His young daughter’s death from a brain tumour, his house burning down, the tension in his marriage because of his wife’s understandable concern for his safety, as well as the loss of some of his best friends and co-workers in horrible accidents, all of this contributed to his state of mind when he blasted off to the moon. But ironically, this was where the drama ended. The actual trip to the moon seems like a dawdle in comparison.

First Man also suffers from the same problem that cropped up in Apollo 13: how to make the female characters relevant to the plot of the movie. First Man does a better job of this than Apollo 13, but it causes the movie to feel a bit bi-polar as the scenes shift from the intimate tragedy of Armstrong’s family life to the over-scale dangers of his work life. Unlike Apollo 13, where the women’s stories had the unfortunate feel of being tacked on, there was one point where I thought the part of Janet (portrayed in a show-stealing performance by Claire Foy) was considerably more interesting than Armstrong’s struggle to get to the moon. I had not known many of the emotional details of Armstrong’s life, like his child dying, and this made his task all the more incredible in retrospect. But the emotional heart of the story is with Janet, not Neil. Maybe a movie about her struggle might have been the emotionally-charged hit the filmmakers were hoping for. But the filmmakers were not interested in making a film about her. They were blinded by the ‘great man’ mythology, bent on telling the hero story. My instinct tells me this would have been a more satisfying movie if the filmmakers had decided to end with the rocket launch.

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What was missing from the movie was the passion and awe generated in almost every human being on planet Earth at the time. All the technical depictions of Armstrong’s accomplishments add up to little when compared with his emotional battles at home. The contrast between Armstrong’s day job and the emotional reality of his domestic life diffused the impact of the moon landing, despite the massive effort to illustrate the event with as much fidelity as possible.  The technology has come a long way since Ron Howard’s attempt in Apollo 13. But despite the effort, there’s something about every depiction of the moon that just does not come across as believable. (4) Don’t get me wrong, I suppose the scene is the most technically accurate depiction of Armstrong’s ‘one small step’ yet filmed, but there was no corresponding sense of wonder, at least nothing close to what I personally remember watching television as a 9-year-old in July of 1969. There’s something more awe inspiring about the grainy footage from the locked-down cameras during the real missions. Somehow, I could tell there was air in the scene and that as soon as the First A.D. yelled ‘cut’, the actor flipped up his face plate and took a deep breath.

Much was made of not seeing the planting of the American flag in the lunar surface, blaming Cazelle’s dual American/French citizenship for the unpatriotic omission. As was Canadian actor Ryan Gosling’s interpretation of such an iconic American figure. But that was the least of the scene’s problems. By the time the moon landing actually takes place, much of the emotional energy of the movie has already been spent on the personal relationships. The emotional climax of the movie, when Janet confronts Neil about his responsibility to his children, actually happens a full twenty minutes before he steps onto the moon. (5)  In contrast to Apollo 13, it was the moon landing that felt tacked-on.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel I know Neil Armstrong any better now than before, which is too bad considering I was hoping for some insight into what propelled this exceptional man. What formative event in his life drove him to accomplish so much? Was there a hero he aspired to? A mentor? The filmmakers seemed uninteresting in exploring such motivation. Even if they had had concocted a bullshit explanation, it would have left some sort of satisfaction in understanding why he ended up being the first man on the moon, not just a recounting of how. Though the Right Stuff was a flawed film, there was little doubt that the filmmakers understood that all the men who became astronauts in the Mercury Program were in awe of Chuck Yeager, both the man and his unbelievable skill. Where was such a figure in Neil Armstrong’s life? There had to be one. That figure, whoever it was, is like a hole in the middle of the story.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel I know Neil Armstrong any better now than before, which is too bad considering I was hoping for some insight into what propelled this exceptional man.

I can’t help but feel the filmmakers missed an opportunity. Both Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff clarified a myth for many who had only a vague idea of that had really happened at the beginning of space exploration. First Man refused to venture into the territory of myth-making and the movie was far less satisfying because of it. What made Neil Armstrong different from the other astronauts in the Apollo program was that he wasn’t a flashy braggart. And maybe that was what NASA was looking for in their hero; a competent, low-key individual, like the mythological figure of Chuck Yeager, who could execute astonishing feats of flying and just smile and say, “Aw, shucks. Weren’t nothin’.” But in today’s world, it seems not being a flashy braggart is somehow seen as a character flaw. Unfortunately, that leaves the sense that Neil Armstrong was the most un-heroic hero of our age and that’s really not fair. I believe Armstrong and what he accomplished deserves far better.

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1)  These include Pirates of Silicon Valley (wr./dir. Martyn Burke), Steve Jobs (wr. Aaron Sorkin/dir. Danny Boyle), Jobs (wr. Matt Whitely/dir. Joshua Michael Stern), Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (dir. Alex Gibney) and a half-dozen lesser efforts to try to figure him out.

2)  It was only when the rights to the book lapsed that the property was taken up by Universal Studios and Dreamworks SKG that Chazelle was finally attached.

3) Much is made of the last-minute ‘hop’ Armstrong executed to avoid boulders and a small crater at the projected landing site, but for a fighter pilot and X-15 test pilot, such a slow motion manoeuvre would have hardly elevated his heart rate.

4) A note to those lunatics  who think the moon landing was faked only have to look at the real faked moon landings to see exactly how difficult such an undertaking can be.

5) After which she mysteriously disappears from the film. I believe the emotional void this left is partially to blame for the anti-climax of the actual moon landing. Janet was the emotional anchor of this film and it beggars belief that they didn’t feel the need to show what she was feeling during the launch and the eight day journey.

 

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First Man (2018), 141 minutes.

Released by: Universal Pictures, October 12, 2018

Direction by: Damien Chazelle

Written by: Josh Singer

Based on: First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong

By James R. Hansen

Cinematography: Linus Sandgren

Starring: Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy

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