Official Trailer:

First five minutes set the tone for the movie, Neil Armstrong piloting a rocket powered aircraft in the stratosphere and after reaching 140000 feet he can’t get control of the aircraft to descend. It goes in to upward drift, what NASA calls “Ballooning”. With not enough atmosphere for flight controls to bite into, he couldn’t turn. After few dreadful minutes, he regains the control and lands to safety. We are immersed inside the cockpit of the aircraft. We get to see the travel from astronauts’ point of view, stuck inside a cramped space, making us feel claustrophobic. Extreme closeup shots of faces and analog dials, loud booms, rolling and rattling sounds, and metal screeches amplify the effect and make us feel how hellish the journey must have been. Rather than showing beautiful shots of aircraft zipping through atmosphere to thumping music, First Man goes after showing us how harrowing and nightmarish the space travel is. If you have any romantic image of taking a trip to moon and take a walk there, this is the movie for you….to bust that romanticizing. Rather than glamorizing space travel with dazzling special effects and grandstanding speeches, First Man focuses on what it really is, a risky adventure with a high probability of no return, with amazing visual and sound effects.

First Man depicts the dangers of space travel and the stress astronauts’ families went through. Why do these guys sign up for astronaut training? Neil Armstrong signs up for NASA training to distract himself from Karen’s death, his 2-year-old daughter, to cancer. As a person he is shown as a private person, a man of limited words, with an emotional shield around him. He doesn’t talk about Karen’s death to his wife or friends. We see multiple people die in crashes and simulations in the years leading up to the moon landing. You are left wondering what is their mental makeup that enables them to jump over the fear and cross the line. How do they continue with it even after seeing deaths around them? Are they really that brave or have a death wish? By the way this is not just about space travel, it is true with people who defuse bombs or go on any other riskier missions – remember Hurt Locker?

When First Man shows these astronauts and engineers on the ground, we get the feel that for them this is like their day job. These grown up men must have been brought up on the regimen, boys don’t cry or show their emotion openly, they need to bottle it up and suffer in silence. I guess that kind of stereotyping exists even now in our society. But the toll it takes on their families, wives and kids, is tragic. Janet, Neil’s wife, is deeply frustrated by his silence. What I liked about the movie is how it shows the courage, fear, and ordeal of living with someone who puts their life at risk for a living.

Director does a balancing act by showing us the protests and arguments against space exploration that went on during that era. When there are critical humanitarian crises that require the money why spend it on expensive, risky space travel? Then there is the racism angle, space travel is only for whiteys. Protests get juxtaposed with JFK’s speech towards the end which makes a compelling argument for space exploration. Like Neil says in the movie, unless you explore and get a different perspective how else would you know how thin earth’s atmosphere is.