Armstrong

Last Friday was a grey, rainy day just as meteorologists had predicted. I donned my new Marmot jacket, grabbed my senior citizen bus pass and headed into the city centre to watch a film at "The Showroom".

It was the two o'clock screening of "The First Man" starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong - the first man on the moon.

It begins powerfully. Armstrong is on a test flight - heading to the stratosphere. It is an intensely physical and noisy experience. The shaking is almost unbearable but Armstrong is focused, calm and determined even when this test flight goes horribly wrong.

Indeed, that is how he comes across in his home life with his wife Janet played by English actress Claire Foy and his young son and daughter. The daughter's name is Karen and very sadly she dies at the tender age of two from a malignant brain tumour. That was back in 1961. The film suggests that Armstrong's private grief over her loss is even present during the moon landing.

He is shown standing by a small lunar crater into which he casts Karen's bracelet. In reality, this never happened. It is a dramatic device dreamt up by the screenplay writer Josh Singer in league with the director -  Damien Chazelle. It adds an element of emotional poignancy but in any case filmgoers ought to remind themselves that "The First Man" is an entertainment and not a documentary.

There are many wordless phases in the film. Armstrong comes across as rather taciturn which frustrates his wife. Janet even has to bully him to speak to his two sons before heading off to join the historical Apollo 11 mission.

Later I watched an interview with Armstrong's sons - Eric and Mark who played an advisory role in the making of "The First Man". They were very comfortable with the way their "old man" had been portrayed. "He didn't say much but he had a good sense of humour", said one of them.

"The Last Man" is not science fiction. It is about an important event that happened in the middle of the twentieth century. Along with his beautiful first name, Armstrong will be remembered forever in the annals of world history. I was gripped by the film and I applaud Ryan Gosling for his studied and convincing portrayal of a rather unlikely hero.

For a different - and in my opinion unfairly damning - review of this film you might want to read Richard Brody's article in "The New Yorker"  His agenda is clearly a big one but the film was only two hours long and as I have already suggested - its purpose is surely to entertain not to win points for political correctness which is partly what Brody's verbosity appears to be advocating.