![\"First](\"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/First-Man.jpg\" "\\"First")
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When I first heard about Damien Chazelle\u2019s\u00a0First Man<\/em> I was expecting to see another great space movie, something along the lines of Apollo 13<\/a> perhaps, or even Gravity<\/a>. What I got was indeed a great movie (mostly), but it wasn\u2019t a\u00a0space movie<\/em>.<\/p>\n This is not a story of heroes going further, going faster, doing things we couldn\u2019t ever expect to do ourselves, this is not a movie about larger than life, perfect people. This is a movie about normal people. Very talented, brave people, but people nonetheless, with strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears.<\/p>\n First Man<\/em> is the story of the struggles of one of the men in particular, Neil Armstrong. In fact, it\u2019s really the story of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and his wife Janet Armstrong (the excellent Claire Foy).<\/p>\n You get a sense of the struggles of real people here, not stars, not famous celebrities. It is a story of real lives lived to the maximum, of amazing achievements and terrible tragedies.<\/p>\n The story is so dark in places that I felt brought to the edge of tears at times, and this brings me to the one weakness of the film (such that it is): Ryan Gosling\u2019s portrayal of Neil Armstrong is, a few times, a bit wooden.<\/p>\n Neil Armstrong by many accounts was a very private, emotionally controlled person. Gosling\u2019s version of Armstrong was considered spot on by Armstrong\u2019s two sons. Perhaps it was.<\/p>\n For me, there were times when Gosling seemed\u00a0emotionless<\/em>,\u00a0expressionless<\/em>, even when awful things were happening in his personal life. Perhaps that was what Neil Armstrong was really like. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n What I do know, is that it doesn\u2019t translate to the big screen very well. Also, I think the film would have benefited from being 15 minutes shorter, with a few scenes tightened up. Minor quibbles in an otherwise great film.<\/p>\n Overall, I give this film 8.5\/10.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I first heard about Damien Chazelle\u2019s\u00a0First Man I was expecting to see another great space movie, something along the lines of Apollo 13 perhaps, or even Gravity. What I got was indeed a great movie (mostly), but it wasn\u2019t a\u00a0space movie. This is not a story of heroes going further, going faster, doing things we couldn\u2019t ever expect to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":345,"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenjin.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}