First Man starts with a terrifyingly immersive test flight in the early 1960s (especially in big, thunderous IMAX), followed by an equally horrifying personal tragedy, and thus these bold and uncompromising crash jumps in time and emotion set the scene for this utterly absorbing film that tells the story of the Americans' Space Race for the rest of the decade leading to the 1969 moon landing. Like Whiplash and La La Land both showed, Chazelle is a brave director with a clear vision and moulds the filmic style to achieve his ends, and here the liberal use of close ups and POV shots gives the audience little room for distance or escape. Ryan Gosling's main strength as an actor is in absolutely inhabiting a character and presenting every heartbeat on the screen unfalteringly, and in First Man he is outstanding as Neil Armstrong, an unassuming aerospace engineer whose profile rises with every step of the space programme. Claire Foy also gives an equally emotionally honest portrayal of Armstrong's wife, especially with her portrayal of bringing up a family with the uncertainty of her husband staying alive, but there are so many strong performances to admire, including a career highlight from Jason Clarke. Justin Hurwitz creates an intriguingly diverse score/soundscape that is pitched somewhere between Philip Glass and M83 and plays a significant role in the film's success. First Man is far removed from the Hollywood gloss often applied to docudramas such as these, and the film truly delivers, from showing the powerful physical efforts of space launches to simple emotional moments, and making the point about what is important to us as the human race along the way.
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