I finally watched Damien Chazelle's First Man last week. It was a movie I'd meant to take in since I respect the director's previous work, but admit it wasn't a priority because how many movies about the early years of the "Space Race" do we really need?
But First Man does something remarkable and reframes the story in realism that somehow makes a greater impact than any other movie I've seen before on the same subject. I was a space kid—who grew up ion the '70s or '80s and didn't dream of going to Space Camp* while being obsessed with rockets and space shuttles?—and I've seen all kinds of spacecraft up close and in person. But I don't think it ever hit home just how dangerous and relatively rickety** those earlier craft were! Even the training materials feel life-threatening!
Most stories about the U.S. space program focus on lofty patriotic ideals, but First Man puts you in the midst of daredevil number-crunchers and pilots who seem to barely break a sweat under the most insane of circumstances, which of course forces you to confront just how insane one must be to undertake something like launching into orbit and flying high above the Earth.***
It's early in the morning and I'm not doing this justice. I'm trying to describe just how Chazelle took something so burrowed into my own consciousness and made it feel vital and new, instilling an even deeper respect for the people that quite literally put their lives on the line to get us into space.
It's stuck with me.
*An ex of mine went to Space Camp and I was (am) always soooooo jealous.
**Something that goes to space and back isn't "rickety" but I mean this stuff was all experimental and no one could be sure and WOW every other depiction of take-off has people smushed in their seats but never before have I seen something that puts you IN those cramped seats and shuddering aircraft so viscerally.
***Plus, Ryan Gosling! Hubba hubba.
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