In the Andy Weir adaptations The Martian and Project Hail Mary, novelist Weir and screenwriter Drew Goddard invent sci-fi problems that feel reasonably grounded within the world of the movie. Then, we watch movie stars like Matt Damon and Ryan Gosling attempt to solve those problems. It’s been a durable formula so far, boosted in Project Hail Mary by liberal use of full-IMAX space sequences.
But this isn’t Gosling’s first time as a fixer in IMAX-enhanced outer space. In 2018, he reteamed with his La La Land director Damien Chazelle for First Man, a docudrama about Neil Armstrong (Gosling) working his way toward the first moon landing in 1969. Like a Weir story, First Man is full of tech-y challenges and smart professionals working the problem. But there’s emotional power in the film’s acknowledgment of the unsolvable stuff Armstrong encounters along the way.
Chazelle’s film could have easily played like a standard biopic, complete with a tragic backstory to give the historical figure greater human interest. Early in the film, Armstrong loses his two-year-old daughter to a brain tumor, a tragedy that lingers with him as he moves from test piloting to acceptance into the Project Gemini program to, finally, commanding the Apollo 11 mission that launches in 1969. Rather than providing a clearly mapped motivation to achieve greatness and/or heal his family, Armstrong’s loss hangs over the film as something more elusive, and much harder to process. Is he eager to slip the surly bonds of Earth because he sometimes feels the planet holds no more for him?
Chazelle isn’t so indelicate as to say so directly, and never denies the know-how and optimism inherent in the broader moonshot project (even when nodding to the fact that the Moon mission was not universally hailed, with footage of protests over the millions of dollars allocated for it). But he and Gosling do imply that Armstrong’s fixation on this goal is more than avoidance of family issues. Rather than the standard dynamic of a man throwing himself into work out of grief, it’s almost as if Armstrong is seeking an out-of-body experience, which matches how the work itself goes so far beyond the normal boundaries of human accomplishment.
First Man pays tribute to that accomplishment even (or especially) as it acknowledges these early astronauts’ closeness to oblivion. “We got good at funerals,” Armstrong’s wife Janet (Claire Foy) notes ruefully to another NASA family, describing her past experiences with the program. The film sometimes resembles the work of Michael Mann, with a league of terrific character actors (Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Shea Whigham, Corey Stoll, Patrick Fugit, Ciarán Hinds, Lukas Haas) doing the work, getting the job done, taking care of business, and so on, with notes of angst rising and falling in the background.
Gosling is the greatest source of that angst, and though he’s superhumanly charming in Project Hail Mary befitting his post-Barbie star turn, Miller and Lord don’t like to leave too much unspoken. His character’s moments of loneliness and sadness seem less organic and more a function of a well-constructed screenplay. They’re not designed to linger. In First Man, Gosling gives us a Neil Armstrong who can be a straightforward, mission-first leader and loving husband and father when called upon, but sometimes appears lost in his own orbit. It’s one of his best performances, syncing up his starry charisma with a sadness that defies easy solutions.
The movie defies easy solutions on the technical side, too. Several of Project Hail Mary’s best visual signatures were used earlier in First Man, most prominently the warm, grainy look of celluloid. (Project Hail Mary emulates this digitally; the directors describe a “film out” process that prints the digital images on film to achieve a film-like effect). Chazelle used a mixture of 16mm, 35mm, and 65mm film to achieve this effect, and the different stocks (and actual celluloid) makes the grain differences more noticeable. Some early test-pilot sequences shot on the grainier 16mm stock are particularly evocative, with the vividness of color and light captured alongside the realistic limitations on the images’ clarity, giving them just the right hint of light-bending abstraction. Also like Project Hail Mary, First Man skipped green screens, in favor of practical sets, LED backgrounds, and miniatures. In theaters, its moonwalk sequence, shot with startling clarity on 65mm film, played out in full-frame IMAX where available. It’s less than 15 minutes of large-format footage all told, which now might seem paltry, considering at least half of Project Hail Mary unfolds in “real” extra-tall IMAX where available.
But visually and emotionally, the impact of the First Man sequence is enormous, and that carries over to home video, which can still convey the sense of quiet contemplation the movie finds on the other side of some ultra-familiar news footage. Not that much of the movie ultimately takes place outside of Earth’s atmosphere, but it makes the most of those moments, and is more awe-inspiring than many further-flung space stories. There’s nothing wrong with the ingratiating, crowdpleasing tone of Project Hail Mary; it’s a more fantastical story aiming for broader appeal, and will probably draw more eyes in its first weekend than First Man did in its entire theatrical run. It’s valuable, though, to see a movie about space travel that’s more focused on humans than the vague uplift of the human spirit. First Man puts in the work.
Project Hail Mary is in theaters now. First man is available to rent online.
