The Famous Man No One Knows

When I was a child, my family gathered around the television in July 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module on the moon. What had been the stuff of science fiction was now science fact – man had set foot on another celestial body. When Armstrong stepped off the lander’s pad onto the moon’s dusty gray surface, the few inches he traveled was truly a giant leap. He immediately became the most famous man in the world, even as the quiet spoken engineer remained a cypher. Armstrong wasn’t one of the boisterous test pilots of the Mercury days, nor a laconic country boy like Yaeger. Now, 49 years after the moon landing, and six years after Armstrong’s death from complications after bypass surgery, we have a carefully sketched cinematic portrait of the astronaut in First Man.

The movie is based on Armstrong’s authorized biography of the same name, written by James R. Hansen, adapted for the screen by Josh Singer who also did The Post and Spotlight, for which he won an Oscar. Director Damien Chazelle, an Oscar winner for La La Land, also worked with Armstrong’s two sons to get the story right, and this is a movie where it’s more “true” than just “based on a true story.” The main incidents in the film happened as they are portrayed. There is one fictional plot point, but since it’s the emotional climax of the film one can forgive Chazelle and understand why it is there. We, the audience, need that moment.

The movie spans 8 years, beginning during the time Armstrong, played to perfection by Ryan Gosling, is a pilot in the X-15 program to soared to the edge of the atmosphere. (Armstrong had taken his first flight in a Ford Tri-motor when he was 6 and earned his pilot’s license before he could drive. He was 15 when WWII ended, but served in the Air Force during the Korean War, flying 78 missions. Afterwards he joined the flight research organization that eventually became NASA.) In Apollo 13 and other space-themed movies, it’s mentioned that if a spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere at too shallow a trajectory it can bounce off and get thrown back into space. That actually happened to Armstrong in the X-15, but he kept his head and figured out a way to get down. Chazelle shows throughout the movie just how dangerous it was to be part of the space program, and includes a careful reconstruction of the Apollo 1 disaster, the deadliest accident in NASA history until the Challenger explosion.

On the ground, Armstrong and his wife Janet (Claire Foy) were dealing with the most horrible event any parent can face – the terminal illness and death of their two-year-old daughter, Karen (also called Muffie by the family). Armstrong handled the grief by closing himself down, returning to the X-15 program right after Karen died, then becoming an astronaut a few months later. Moving to Houston from California, Armstrong worked with Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler), one of the original Mercury astronauts, along with Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll), who displays a habit of speaking before his brain is engaged. The Armstrongs’ closest friends, though, were Ed White (Jason Clarke) and his wife, Pat (Olivia Hamilton).

Chazelle gives the movie a cinema verité feel by using hand-held cameras for the earthbound scenes and then putting audience in the tight cockpits and capsules during flights. It keeps the story from taking on a heroic Hollywood sheen, instead anchoring it in reality. Gosling gives the best performance of his career, an embodiment that comes from deep inside him. Foy’s raw power as Janet counterweighs Gosling’s surface restraint, and they work off of each other beautifully. Small moments that sparkle like diamonds fill the film, such as when Janet and Neil share a dance to an other-worldly piece of music. (The track is called “Lunar Rhapsody” and features an early electronic instrument called the Theremin; the Armstrongs did own and listen to that piece.)

The supporting cast is filled with excellent actors, including Lukas Haas, Patrick Fugit, Ciaran Hinds, and Brian d’Arcy James. For the soundtrack, Chazelle again worked with Justin Hurwitz, who scored both Whiplash and La La Land. The music is especially important since several scenes have little or no dialogue. Kudos need to go to production designer Nathan Crowley, who’s done all of Christopher Nolan’s films since Insomnia, along with the art direction and set decoration teams. They nail the feel of the mid-60s homes as well as the NASA settings.

Chazelle made his name with two music-centered films, Whiplash and La La Land. First Man is a quantum leap forward for him as a filmmaker. He imbues the movie with the feeling of wonder and awe even as he tells the story in a clear-eyed way that brooks no false hero worship. Armstrong is a complicated, complex character, and Chazelle (and Gosling) let him breathe and be who he was. It’s an incredible story that hasn’t been told before on film. Now it’s been told well, and that is an accomplishment.

The Mountain Wins Again

In a little over 8 months, it will be the 20^th anniversary of one of the great disasters in the annals of mountain climbing. On May 10^th, 1996, several climbing parties attempting to summit Mt. Everest got caught on the mountain when a storm raced in. It dropped visibility to almost nothing while hurricane-force freezing winds ripped at the climbers’ bodies. Eight people lost their lives, their bodies lost or unrecoverable from the 29,000 foot peak. (There are now over 150 permanent residents on the mountain.) The story was told in the bestseller by Jon Krakauer, “Into Thin Air.” Now it’s been made into the movie Everest.

As the movie opens, text tells how after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first summited Everest in 1953, 40 more climbers attempted it in the next few decades, with one in four losing their lives in the attempt. But then two companies turned climbing the mountain into a commercial venture, charging a hefty price to take climbers to the top of the world. While there’s a certain amount of hubris in thinking an inherently deadly activity can be commercialized, the companies were able to operate without any fatalities for the first few years. That changed on May 10^th.

Everest focuses on the leader of one of the commercial climbs, Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), whose company Adventure Consultants had 8 clients for the climb, including Krakauer who had contracted to write about the experience for Outside magazine. Others in the group included Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), whose climbing put a strain on his marriage to his wife Peach (Robin Wright); Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), a postman who’d tried to summit before but had to turn back; and Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori), who’d climbed 6 of the 7 highest mountains in the world and was trying to complete the septet.

Hall’s wife Jan Arnold (Kiera Knightley), a climber herself, was back at home in New Zealand expecting their first child in July. Hall’s base camp team included camp manager Helen Winton (Emily Watson) and Dr. Caroline Mackenzie (Elizabeth Debicki). The leader of Mountain Madness, the other commercial company, was Scott Fisher (Jake Gyllenhaal), with a more laid back attitude towards the climb. Two other teams, one from South Africa and the other making an IMAX movie about the mountain, were planning like Hall and Fisher to summit on May 10^th, which created a traffic jam on the narrow points on the route to the summit. There’s only a small window in May when the summit has the best weather conditions and it’s only -4 F at the summit, rather than the average -31F. The winds are also less severe at that time. Everest is so high it protrudes into the jet stream; winds have been clocked at 175 mph, faster than a Cat 5 hurricane.

Icelandic director/writer/producer Baltasar Kormakur is mostly known to US audiences for directing 2013’s 2 Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Walburg, but he’d also made other films in his native country, including The Deep, a based-on-a-true-story tale of a fisherman trying to survive after his boat capsizes in the freezing ocean. Along with screenwriters William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) and Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours), Kormakur has created a remarkably faithful account of the disaster as well as a story of survival against huge odds for some of the mountaineers.

It helps that the movie was partially filmed in Nepal as even with the special effects available today it’s hard to recreate the spectacle of the Himalayas and the Nepalese landscape. Before the showing at the Flix Brewhouse where I saw Everest, they screened clips of movies starring actors from the feature or films that have similar themes. One clip was from 2000’s Vertical Limit that supposedly takes place on K2, the second highest mountain and the neighbor of Everest. Comparing it to the visuals of Everest is like comparing a gangster movie from the 1930s filmed on the studio backlot with Goodfellas – the point being, there is no comparison. Visual effects were used to recreate Everest’s summit, but director and crew did an incredible job matching it to pictures that have been taken of the actual route.

The film doesn’t delve deeply into the characters, particularly in the case of Scott Fisher, but it does draw you in and has a definite emotional power. If you’ve read “Into Thin Air” or some of the other accounts of the events, Everest is visually illuminating and clarifying. It’s hard to turn real life into reel life, but the makers of Everest have done a commendable job.

Darkness at Dawn

If ever there was a movie series that has reaped the benefit of modern technology, it’s Planet of the Apes. While the makeup in the original 1968 move was quite impressive for its day, you never forgot that you were watching actors in heavy latex prosthetics. The movie’s theme and its killer twist overcame the prosthetics – and allowed the film to become a five-movie series. There were some makeup improvements in the Tim Burton reboot, but the rest of the film was such a mess you hardly noticed them, and it looked like the series was dead. But then came 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, using motion capture technology and the genius of Andy Serkis’ embodiment of Caesar. For the first time, the intelligence-enhanced apes were believable, and fascinating. The success of Rise led to the newest film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

The end of Rise foreshadowed a nasty plague caused by the Gen-Sys anti-Alzheimer’s drug ALZ 113, the treatment that gave Caesar (Serkis) and the other apes their intelligence. In a simple but effective sequence, the plague – called the Simian Flu because of its tie to ape testing – is tracked to its final devastation of mankind. Ten years have passed since Caesar led his apes north of San Francisco to Muir Woods where they set up their own society. During a hunt for food, Caesar and another of the original tribe, Koba (Toby Kebbell) must save Caesar’s son Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) from a rampaging bear. They return to the settlement where Caesar’s wife Cornelia (Judy Greer) presents him with a new child. Cornelia, though, shows signs of illness.

Later while walking through the woods, Blue Eyes and a friend come face to face with a human. The man’s both armed and paranoid about apes, and he shoots Blue Eyes’ friend out of fear. The man is part of a small group under the leadership of Malcolm (Jason Clarke) that wants to find and restore a hydro power plant to give electricity to an outpost of humans still living in San Francisco. Caesar at first refuses the request, forcefully telling the leader of the outpost, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) to forget the plan. But Malcolm, along with his son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and his partner Ellie (Keri Russell), return to the forest and are able to change Caesar’s mind. While they make progress toward peaceful co-existence, both Dreyfus and Koba prepare for war.

Jason Clarke has a wonderful ability to communicate both physical strength as well as sensitive intelligence. His role as Dan, the CIA agent in charge of enhanced interrogations in Zero Dark Thirty, played up how quietly imposing he can be, while in Dawn he is the hope for understanding, following in the footsteps of James Franco’s role in Rise. Oldman is effective as always as the less-than-trusting Dreyfus, while Russell and Smit-McPhee provide good support for the story.

Toby Kebbell’s Koba rises almost to the level of Shakespeare’s Iago or Richard III. He’s fearsome, and the physical manifestation is truly frightening, yet he’ll pull on a mask and act the fool when he must. The moment when he drops the mask, though, is starkly powerful. A strong antagonist is needed to make a story memorable, and Kebbell provides that strength.

Caesar remains the central character, a leader trying to balance power and mercy. While the embodiment is incredible, what sets it apart is when the camera focuses on Serkis’ eyes and you read his thoughts. While he’ll never be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar – the prejudice against technology is too strong – in both Rise and Dawn Serkis does Oscar-caliber work. Serkis continues to be busy, with Avengers: Age of Ultron coming next year to be followed by a new Tintin movie as well as Star Wars 7.

Director Matt Reeves had worked in television (including several episodes of “Felicity” with Keri Russell) before moving to the big screen with Cloverfield and Let Me In. While those movies were a solid start, with Dawn he reaches blockbuster success. He’s assisted by production designer James Chinlund (The Avengers) who creates a post-human world where nature has taken charge again. Also, one particular kudo to the movie for not destroying the Golden Gate Bridge as a cheap post-apocalyptic visual. It’s become so common (Godzilla destroyed it two months ago) that leaving the bridge intact stands out.

With Rise and now Dawn, screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, assisted by Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard, Unstoppable) on the new film, have not just rebooted the series but have completely reimagined it, adding depth and emotional heart that was absent in the original movies. Dawn made more in its initial weekend than Rise, and it has topped the weekend box office for two weeks straight. According to IMDb, another movie is in the works with Reeves directing as well as collaborating on the script with Bomback. I’m looking forward to seeing it.