Moviola
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Moviola brings the best in cinema to your community, wherever you live in the UK – in the last year nearly 2,000 film shows for 125,000 people.
Kilmington shows the films on a wide screen in the village hall with seating for 100. The first showing in Kilmington was in March 2005 with the film “Vanity Fair”. Since it started until December 2018 we have shown 102 films selling 7,274 tickets and raising £17,701 for the Village Hall funds. |
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First Man (12A)
Wednesday 3rd July 2019
Wednesday 3rd July 2019
First Man is, this riveting, exhaustively researched and utterly believable film manages to shake you, take your breath away and even pull a few tears from your eyes. It takes its tone from Armstrong himself. Played by Ryan Gosling, the best deadpan actor in the business, he is a highly intelligent and skilful pilot who keeps his emotions under tight control, whether he’s hurtling through the sky or drinking a beer in his kitchen. When he talks to his young children, he sounds as if he is conducting a press conference, and when he is at a press conference he sounds as if he is resisting interrogation by foreign agents. He is happily married to Janet but they’re not the most effusive of spouses.
Perhaps Armstrong’s almost robotic reserve is what’s needed of a lunar explorer. Following him through the 1960s, from the Gemini programme (docking two spacecraft in orbit) to the Apollo programme (reaching the Moon), First Man conveys with overwhelming force how stressful, dangerous and altogether unglamorous it is to test a prototype spacecraft. The astronauts and would-be astronauts are stuffed into tiny spaces, surrounded by sharp-edged metal surfaces, and held in place by the sort of seatbelts used by budget
airlines. It’s rare that you see the exterior of any of the planes and rockets in the film. Instead, Chazelle puts you right in the cockpit with Armstrong as he blasts his way through the clouds.
These test flights can also be fatal. There are two funerals in the film, and several others that take place off screen, so don’t get too attached to any of the characters. When the Apollo programme reaches the stage where a lunar landing can be attempted, Armstrong is chosen as commander not just because of his stout heart and cool head, but because he is one of the few qualified pilots left alive. It’s sobering to learn about these sacrifices, and yet the film treats them as unsentimentally as Armstrong does. A more obvious approach would have been to pour on the grief on each occasion, but First Man keeps flitting through events with amazing speed and singlemindedness. Still, even though it doesn’t dwell on the risks Armstrong is taking, the narrative keeps the viewers in a state of near-constant tension, because he and his wife are in a state of near-constant tension themselves. They both know that he won’t withdraw from the Apollo programme, and they both know that it might well kill him, but they don’t discuss it. These years of unspoken bravery and modesty are ultimately more affecting than the tearful fights and reconciliations you might have expected.
Gosling and Foy’s performances in First Man are probably too unshowy to win awards. But they should, because they could hardly have been bettered. The same goes for the whole of this extraordinary film.
Perhaps Armstrong’s almost robotic reserve is what’s needed of a lunar explorer. Following him through the 1960s, from the Gemini programme (docking two spacecraft in orbit) to the Apollo programme (reaching the Moon), First Man conveys with overwhelming force how stressful, dangerous and altogether unglamorous it is to test a prototype spacecraft. The astronauts and would-be astronauts are stuffed into tiny spaces, surrounded by sharp-edged metal surfaces, and held in place by the sort of seatbelts used by budget
airlines. It’s rare that you see the exterior of any of the planes and rockets in the film. Instead, Chazelle puts you right in the cockpit with Armstrong as he blasts his way through the clouds.
These test flights can also be fatal. There are two funerals in the film, and several others that take place off screen, so don’t get too attached to any of the characters. When the Apollo programme reaches the stage where a lunar landing can be attempted, Armstrong is chosen as commander not just because of his stout heart and cool head, but because he is one of the few qualified pilots left alive. It’s sobering to learn about these sacrifices, and yet the film treats them as unsentimentally as Armstrong does. A more obvious approach would have been to pour on the grief on each occasion, but First Man keeps flitting through events with amazing speed and singlemindedness. Still, even though it doesn’t dwell on the risks Armstrong is taking, the narrative keeps the viewers in a state of near-constant tension, because he and his wife are in a state of near-constant tension themselves. They both know that he won’t withdraw from the Apollo programme, and they both know that it might well kill him, but they don’t discuss it. These years of unspoken bravery and modesty are ultimately more affecting than the tearful fights and reconciliations you might have expected.
Gosling and Foy’s performances in First Man are probably too unshowy to win awards. But they should, because they could hardly have been bettered. The same goes for the whole of this extraordinary film.
Read more about Moviola at www.moviola.org
