FIRST MAN (Ryan Gosling, 2018)

[tabuno]

Ryan Gosling, has a shot for an Oscar nomination for director and his movie for cinematography, editing, and sound (even though the box office results suggests otherwise). Ryan has elevated the art of film-making with large close ups, a fusion of documentary style photography along with an authentic loud crisp sound design. He has borrowed some of the class elements of photography, sound, and music from Stanley Kubrick’s sci fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). There are also some film techniques that lifted the sci fi space epic Interstellar (2014) directed by Christopher Nolan to another realm of true authentic realism. And more intriguing his Ryan’s decision to use a naturalistic approach to his directing reminiscent of Lars von Trier’s sci fi drama Melancholia (2011). The only weaknesses in this movie were perhaps the inevitable and unavoidable difficulty of providing sufficient background explanations and allowances for the sudden transitions occurring with gaps as years are necessarily skipped. The density and storyline was probably more than enough for a television event covering four or seven six hours’ worth of material, but the little screen would have been too diminutive for the amazing impact of the big screen display of this epic historical event.

[oscar jubis]

I don't need background explanations because there are no mysteries in FIRST MAN. The context is already in my head because I was 8 years old and remember well. And also because there have been other movies both fiction and documentary that provide the explanations as you put it. The great value and edification provided by FIRST MAN is precisely the intimate perspective, and it does so magnificently in my experience of the film. It's perhaps too intimate to be appreciated by the mainstream (young) audience that drives the b.o. who expect a more fantastic and flashy film. Bear in mind that this film is not science fiction because there's nothing fictional about its science. It is all acttually old-school, so to speak.

[Chris Knipp]

Here's my Paris MOvie Journal entry.



FIRST MAN (Damien Chazelle 2018). A movie about the Moon landing and Neil Armstrong that's radical in its harsh minimalism. It's hard to forget the final sequence where Neil (Ryan Gosling) and his wife (Claire Foy) stare wordless at each other when he's in quarantine, or the many blastoffs that are shot as a series of explosions and blurry closeups. You think it was a budget issue but then, given some sequences, probably just an artistic choice. Did Armstrong really take his sorrow over his dead daughter into his moments of greatest triumph? Was he so inarticulate, and did his wife push him so bluntly to say goodbye to his sons and admit he might not come back? Beyond the triumph here, there is a constant sense of tragedy, and very little celebration. Props for originality, but somehow it feels false, starting with Gosling, who isn't monolithic and grand enough. Watched at UGC Odéon 23 Oct. 2018. Metascore 84. AlloCine press rating 3.9.