The sci-fi movie that flopped but Christopher Nolan loves it. “He dared to make an introverted work from the most extroverted moment in history” – Cinema News

The film often goes unnoticed when talking about Damien Chazelle’s fantastic filmography.

With five feature films and a series in his filmography, Damien Chazelle has emerged as one of today’s great directors. Works such as Whiplash – In Search of Perfection, La La Land – Singing Seasons or the portrait of the Hollywood classic full of excess and stars, Babylon, speak for themselves, but there is a work by the Rhode Island filmmaker that tends to go unnoticed when reviewing his work. career on the big screen.

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With Nolan’s seal of approval

This is none other than First Man, a brilliant portrait of the NASA mission that landed man on the Moon and, more specifically, of Neil Armstrong, who was brought to life by a graced Ryan Gosling. Unfortunately, this biographical drama with an unexpected sense of adventure went almost unnoticed at the international box office, receiving much less recognition than it truly deserved.

However, this strange failure – in terms of reception, not quality – may taste less bitter to Chazelle after reading Christopher Nolan’s praise for First Man in a piece in Variety’s Directors on Directors section. In it, Nolan surrendered to narrative and discursive aspects that fit perfectly with the personal affiliations that the person responsible for Oppenheimer projects in the vast majority of his films.

“Your approach [de Chazelle] Neil Armstrong’s journey would never be ordinary. Instead, he has created a masterful recreation of the space program with absolutely compelling physical detail and layers of cinematic immersion that demand credibility and guarantee the radical nature. And Chazelle’s intensely subjective perspective comes as a gradually revealing shock.”

In addition to praising the film in general, Nolan stopped to examine one of its most controversial aspects: the decision not to show the moment in which the United States flag was placed on the lunar surface. An option that, for Christopher’s sake, is closely linked to a point of view that escapes the collective to focus on the protagonist’s personal experience.

“By equating our most intimate human moments with grand adventure, the film does not diminish the cosmic but rather elevates the terrain. The discussions about the representation of the flag on the Moon in the film ignored the following point: the choice was not about different forms of patriotism, it was about a filmmaker jumping on the collective meaning of this great event to arrive at a genuine understanding of what the individual who carried it out could actually have felt it.”

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For Nolan, time will eventually put First Man in its place, and he made sure of that.

“[Ele ousou] make an introverted film about the most extroverted moment in the history of the world. The true importance of First Man, as well as the important events it dares to interpret, may not be discovered in one season.”

If you check whether the words of the last Oscar winner for Best Director are correct or not, you can watch The First Man on Star+ and Telecine.

*Translation from a partner website of QuandoCinema

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