First Man is the the story of Neil Armstrong and the perils that lead to the Lunar Landing. The Film is a master class of cinematography, acting, and music, as it transports you from this Earth to the Moon. What becomes apparent as Neil loses his beloved daughter Karen, and then later good friends in accidents like Apollo 1’s Unplug Oxygen Test, is the cost of exploration, that lives are lost to achieve milestones and great feats for mankind. More than this you are left with a sense that The First Step Neil will make will be akin to The Atom Bomb, a paradigm shift for humanity, that it will mean a next step for civilization and all of the people made in the Image of God. There were moments in the film that I felt a profound sense of awe and even melancholy. One such moments is when the NASA Leader says, “the Clergyman shall commend these souls as they do at sea, to the deepest of deep,” you can feel that deep, even like crator on the moon, a chasm of death, and how thankful we are Jesus has tasted it for us, “Yes, by God’s grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone. Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.” (Hebrews 2:9, 14-5). That we need to be afraid of the “Undiscovered Country” as Hamlet called it. And yet that feeing, that Shadow of Death, of oblivion, teaches us something, as the Psalmist says, “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more,” (Psalm 103:15-16) and in the end “surely the people is grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever.” (Isaiah 40:7-8)
I for one hold a extra Biblical belief that we will be explorers, that C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy is possible future, even Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek as possible outcome, if mankind does not tear itself to pieces before we get there. or perhaps like Gundam it will be the tearing apart that spreads to other worlds. What I am certain of is God in all his majesty made the Universe, and there are many Goldie Lock’s Planets, habitable for mankind, one is even in the galaxy next to us. I do not think the Holy Trinity placed it there on accident.
What really grounds First Man is Ryan Grosling’s nuanced preformance as Neil Armstrong, and Claire Foy’s Janet Armstrong who helps Neil come down from the Moon in his mind and remember that when all the great exploration is over, he will have to come home to his Family. It is this parallel story, of a family and the First intripid steps of Gemini Program to Apollo that gives us a duality; Neil is deeply mourning his Daughter Karen, who died as child from a Brain Tumor, he will not share this loss with his Wife, and only ruminates on memories of Karen alone, save for when he mentions her to Ed White, one of his best friends, who dies shortly after Neil tells him about Karen; which probably solidifies in Neil’s mind that he must keep his grief to himself. It is so tragic how some people feel they have to bear the loss of a loved one alone, how the devil will prey upon you pain with paranoid thoughts and make them justified by freak accidents like what happened to Ed.
In the finale, Neil on the Moon lets go of a braclet Karen wore, and you see the closure on his face, that he is letting go of his loss on that white world, like the dust of death and bones, to come home to Earth where he approaches his Wife through a qaurantine glass. The glass representing the seperation that has formed between them, and he makes the first gesture, his hand as he touches the glass, and then Janet after looking him in eyes, conveying her disappointment, that she has been carrying the pain of loss too, and the fear that he would not come back; then she reaching to touch the glass, as a gesture to say she is going to forgive him and start again, him putting his hand on the glass to meet hers. This is a brilliant moment that ends the movie, displaying so much rich emotion, and how far these two people have come. You see on Neil’s face that he reaizes, when he is in his qarantine room, listening to JFK’s speech that says, “We choose to go to the moon.. not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” (Chopped up quote). Neil’s face conveys that his quest is over, like Alexander the Great he has wept, “for there were no more worlds to conquer.” He has come to realization that this progress came at a cost, and now that it is over, he must come back to Earth and be a husband again, be a father again. I cannot quite describe how this effects the viewer, how many of us have our Gemini and Apollo programs, whatever they are? How many of us are running from our pain and hurting the ones we love in the process? How many of us need to take the braclet of whatever name or event in our life and need to release it to the void?
You may ask if this film has any religion. There is the coffin with the little cross that Karen is buried in, the mention of Clergy who will commend the souls of Apollo 11 to the Moon as if at Sea, there is a reporter who says, “when you spinning, did you fee God more than at anytime?” This is asked by reporter and painted rather ridiclious in the scene, I suspect she ought to check out Sufi Islam, and Dervishes who spin to feel God. Other than these direct nods to religion, the real meat of spirituality is in Neil’s Story, and when he gets to the Moon, in one scene in particular when he looks back to see Earth, so small, so far away, you get this sense as if seeing through God’s eyes, and just how small our world is in a vast galaxy and universe. That we in our egos behave as if we are demi-gods, and yet take a flight away and look, and you begin to see as Neil says in one scene, “a new perspective, perhaps it something we have needed to see for a long time, and only are able to do so now.” That is the Gift the Lunar Landing gave mankind, the realization of the Psalm, “What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:4).
I highly recommend this film. It is rich with a spirit of exploration and introspection; the Moon and the Inner Man, and how they overlap metaphorically. That we as Mankind are trying to go somewhere else because this is not out home, “For this world is not our home; we are looking forward to our everlasting home in heaven,” (Hebrews 13:14), we are sojourners, “Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls,” (1 Peter 2:11), and we are longing for the True Home in God’s Presence. The thing is we do not need space ship to get to, simply to confess Jesus as LORD God and Son of God, and we have it, “If you confess Jesus as Son of God, God lives in you and you live in God.” (1 John 4:15). Amen.
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