First Man | Kilburnlad | Film | Reviews

First Man


First Man

The day a man stepped on the moon is indelibly inscribed in history and the man that made that first step, Neil Armstrong, is the subject of this film. It follows his story from the lead up to his selection for the program to the point when he uttered those immortal words when stepping on to the lunar surface. I must say that it was refreshing to watch a film that portrayed the reality of getting off this Earth and landing on another body in space. We have become so used to the effortless comings and goings of space craft in the seemingly unending science fiction genre, that the realities of what is involved become lost in the superb computer graphic simulations.

Here we see the astronauts shoe-horned into what are sometimes referred to as tin cans and shot into space while experiencing the sort of environment that would scare the life out of any normal person. The vibrations, the noise, the G forces, the array of instruments and flashing warning lights, and the constant knowledge that the whole thing could so easily end up in a fireball. These are special people, but in this film we see that, despite this, behind each astronaut is a man, with the emotions and personal feelings that we can all experience. And, in the case of Neil Armstrong, this back-story is even more surprising, and is in fact what this film is really about. So if you go to see it, expect a human drama, not yet another CGI-laden space fantasy.

While most of the astronauts were drawn from the forces, Armstrong was a civilian. An engineer and test pilot. The film is credited with telling his story very accurately, featuring many true facts and adding little fictional gloss. We see him endure the loss of his two-year-old daughter, an event that continued to haunt him, and one that leads to a very special moment as he stands next to a crater on the moon years after. We see the stress that his mission places on family life, particularly after three astronauts are lost in a fire while testing a space capsule on the top of a Saturn rocket, one of whom was Armstrong's close friend and neighbour Ed White.

At 141 minutes this is a long film that moves at a fairly leisurely pace. For some it may be too slow, and some may find the personal drama is not quite what they were expecting. But for me it was a very revealing story that completed my fascination with this historic event that I witnessed along with millions of other people as it unfolded live. I still have the Times newspaper supplement from that day back in 1969!

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