Chazelle's First Man' Is At Once Intimate And Grand

Like a lot of parents, Mike Herrick occasionally sees his 13-year-old daughter getting lost in her smartphone and wonders: Is technology messing with childrens brains, even as it enlightens and empowers them in ways that werent possible when his generation grew up?

Whether you were alive then and glued to the TV, or relived it later through that iconic, grainy NASA footage, what you probably remember is just that: The majesty.

You’re probably not thinking much about the deafening noise, the claustrophobia, the terror of blasting offin a rickety sardine can that could fail at any moment for any of a thousand reasons. Or the fact that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin could have ended up stranded, left to die on the moon; President Richard Nixon had a speech ready for that dark scenario.

You will, though, be thinking of these things as you watch “First Man,” the latest installment in director Damien Chazelle’s meteoric career — and sorry for the space pun, but it’s entirely apt. An intimate character study that somehow becomes grand just when it needs to, “First Man,” based on the book by James R. Hansen with a script by Josh Singer, is a worthy successor not only to Chazelle’s “Whiplash” and “La La Land,” but to the astronaut films that precede it, like “Apollo 13” and especially “The Right Stuff.”

It’s also, amazingly, the first feature film about Armstrong. Chazelle’s partner here is Ryan Gosling, who dials down his obvious star wattage to give an internalized, fully committed performance as the “reluctant hero,” as Armstrong’s own family described him.

Gosling’s task here is not merely to give dimension to a mythical American hero. He also has to play a man who famously kept his emotions in check. That may not be an asset for a movie character, but sure was an asset for the first human to set foot on another world.