LEAP OF FAITH (FIRST MAN)

It's sometimes taken for granted today how risky it was for man to walk on the moon.

The world will always remember Neil Armstrong as the person who first set foot on the planet.

But the magnitude of his and NASA's achievement has not been truly appreciated.

Damien Chazelle's 'First Man' sets out to right that wrong by focussing on the price paid by the astronauts, NASA scientists and their families as they sought to assert the US's supremacy over the Soviet Union in the space race.

Life and limb were regularly put on the line in pursuit of a dream that some people in the United States thought was a horrendous waste of government money and effort.

Sometimes lives were lost as NASA tried to push the boundaries of space exploration.

'First Man' begins with Ryan Gosling's Armstrong as a test pilot flying an X-15 rocket plane penetrating the Earth's surface.

The plane rattles as he manages to steer it back to the Mojave Desert and NASA chiefs initially believe Armstrong is losing it because of his two year old daughter Karen's battle with a brain tumour.

Death stalks Chazelle's haunting film as Armstrong and his wife, Claire Foy's Janet Shearon Armstrong lose their daughter.

Armstrong's response is to go back to work rather than take the time to process his grief and he applies successfully to be an astronaut on the Gemini Project, NASA's second manned spaceflight program which saw several crews orbit the Earth.

Among those joining him on the program are Jason Clarke's Ed White and Patrick Fugit's Elliott See.

Like the families in Ron Howard's space drama 'Apollo 13', their families live next door in Houston, they socialise together and together they follow the ups and downs of space exploration.

With the Soviets blazing a trail in every stage of the space race, NASA chiefs Ciaran Hinds' Robert R Gilruth and Kyle Chandler's Deke Slayton are under pressure to bridge the gap and then forge ahead.

But as the space agency pushes ahead with its plans, there are technical setbacks and tragedy strikes, raising questions on Capitol Hill about the wisdom of spending money on space exploration.

Chazelle's movie brilliantly conveys the hard graft and risks NASA took to eclipse the Russians in space.

A nailbiting sequence in which Armstrong and Christopher Abbott's David Scott successfully abort their Gemini 8 mission after their spacecraft spins manically above the Earth underlines the fragile nature of what they are doing.

And as colleagues lose their lives, we see the toll exacted on all the families.

A twitchy Claire Foy is particularly effective in capturing the anxiety of Janet as the Gemini team suffers setbacks, forcing her husband to confront the fact that he might not return to his family when he is selected to fly to the Moon.

Gosling is compellingly taciturn for much of the movie, as Armstrong internalises his grief for his daughter and for his colleagues.

Working from a typically insightful script by 'Spotlight' and 'The Post' writer Josh Singer,  adapted from James R Hansen's 'First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong', Gosling also demonstrates just how driven Armstrong was.

There are strong performances too from Clarke, Olivia Hamilton as his wife Patricia, Chandler, Hinds, Fugit, Abbott, Shea Wigham as the astronaut Gus Grissom, Brian d'Arcy James as the X-15 test pilot Joseph A Walker, Lucas Haas as Apollo pilot Michael Collins and Corey Stoll as a nakedly ambitious and not always likeable Buzz Aldrin, the second astronaut to walk on the moon.

Like all great astronaut movies, the technical bravura of the film is just as important as the performances and the quality of the writing.

Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren, who worked with Chazelle on 'La La Land, dazzlingly switches between the shaky, handheld images of a 16mm camera inside the claustrophobic spacecrafts to 35mm images of Armstrong's domestic life to the epic sweep of 65mm for the Moon sequences.

Like Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' and Alfonso Cuaron's 'Gravity', the sequences in space have a sombre, cold, balletic quality, while the rattle and heat of the training sequenced evoke memories of Philip Kaufman's NASA classic 'The Right Stuff'.

The whole package gloriously comes together in a breathtaking moonwalking sequence, thanks to Langdren's point of view shots, Tom Crowd's perfectly paced film editing, Jon Taylor, Frank A Montano, Ai-Ling Lee and Mary H Elis' superb sound mixing of Mission Control dialogue and Gosling's breathing and Paul Lambert, Ian Hunter, Tristan Myles and J D Schwalm's stunningly executed, Oscar winning visual effects.

The icing on the cake is Justin Huriwitz's clever score, featuring a 94 instrument orchestra that includes a Moog synthesizer, which is deployed sensitively and never overwhelms what is occurring onscreen.

The use of Dr Samuel J Hoffman's 'Lunar Rhapsody'  featuring the eerie sound of the theremin, only underlines the vastness of space and the melancholy felt by Chazelle and Singer's grieving characters.

'First Man' will be the closest most of us will get to experiencing what it must be like to walk on the surface of the Moon.

And isn't that what we want from movies?

It is a magnificent cinematic achievement.

But Chazelle, his cast, screenwriter and crew's greatest achievement is ramming home the huge sacrifices made for that giant leap for makind.

Hopefully now, those sacrifices won't be forgotten.

('First Man' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on October 12, 2018 and was made available on DVD and streaming services on February 18, 2019)