First Man review – an inner space odyssey

Damien Chazelle ’s drama about Neil Armstrong and the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing is a moving tale of loss and perilIn William Peter Blatty ’s underrated 1980 mystery-thrillerThe Ninth Configuration, a grounded lunar astronaut played by Scott Wilson (whosadly died last week) delivers a heartbreaking soliloquy that perfectly encapsulates the existential crisis at the centre of much space-travel cinema. “See the stars, so cold, so far and so very lonely,” he says, plaintively. “What if I got there, got to the moon and couldn’t get back… I’m afraid to die alone, so far from home. And if there’s no God, then that’s really,really alone. ”That sense of cosmic isolation reverberates throughout a range of space movies, from Andrei Tarkovsky ’sSolaris to Douglas Trumbull ’sSilent Running (dubbed “the loneliest adventure of all”) and, more recently, Alfonso Cuarón’sGravity. Now it resurfaces in powerful form inFirst Man, Damien Chazelle ’s sombre, real-life account of the 1969 moon landing, which turns a spectacular space-race adventure into a low-key study of grief.Continue reading...

Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - October 14, 2018 Category: Science Authors: Mark Kermode, Observer film critic Tags: First Man Damien Chazelle Ryan Gosling Biopics Film Culture Apollo 11 Space Source Type: news