+3
Cool, I had pretty much a completely opposite reaction to First Man. I think it’s technically brilliant, riveting and was absolutely worth seeing in theaters. I’ve also found it to be a unique antithesis to Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody, in regards to the controversies sorrounding those latter twos for their supposedly maligned representations of historical figures. In First Man I found a solemnity that’s rare in cinematic recountings of historical journeys paved with loss. It’s essentially using its dire depictions of the failures that preceded the Apollo 11 mission, the cost in lives, to earn itself a bit of historical speculation regarding Armstrong’s own stake in the mission’s success (which is apparently not all that speculative at all.)
It’s, in my mind, actually quite daring in its reframing of a defining human moment as a intimate act of remembrance.