Fifty years ago, half a billion people crowded around televisions to watch the Apollo 11 crew land live on the moon. Shortly thereafter, astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered the famous phrase "It's a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind," and a feat that became perhaps the most daring expedition since the voyage of Christopher Columbus was brought to a successful conclusion.
But equally fascinating was the era that preceded the flight and the life story of the man who was privileged to take the first "human" step on the Moon. The story of First Man begins in 1962, when he began working as a pilot for NASA and when he had to deal with a personal tragedy, the death of his two-year-old daughter from a terminal illness. For a job that represented a permanent flirtation with death, NASA could hardly have chosen a more suitable aspirant. Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) isn't a space cowboy who takes risks willingly and with a dude's swagger; on the other hand, he doesn't panic in life-or-death situations either.
His basic character trait is calm. Calm when he is free-falling in the test module, calm when he answers his son's question whether he will return from the mission, calm when he takes that historic first step. This calm is then counterbalanced by the absolute restlessness of his wife (Claire Foy) and the inner drama with which she experiences his every success, and the possibility that he will never return...
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