Naturally planned to watch First Man yesterday, but did not finish.
Not atypical for the ADHD squirrels in my head, especially when the WNBA is on, but I don't think I've ever watched this one all the way through in one sitting. It is not your big space spectacle, but rather an emotional journey, and I have difficulties these days when it comes to stuff that gets me in my feels, especially involving grief.
And actually, that's a big part of what I love about the movie. Don't get me wrong, I obviously enjoy real rockets and sci-fi explosions and whatnot, but I really appreciate the lens Damien Chazelle used here. Astronauts are just as human as the rest of us, and deal with life and loss in their own ways. There are times that I wish I could compartmentalize the way Neil apparently did.
Anyway, the final is scene is a perfect punctuation mark. It doesn't show up in Hansen's book, so I went looking to see if the filmmakers had said anything about it. Here's the screenwriter, Josh Singer:
Look, in point of fact, Neil and Janet didn’t get divorced for another 20 years. They were both strong-willed individuals who were going to muddle through regardless. In the first version of that scene, we didn’t have them touching hands. On the page, it was just them looking at each other through the glass. Then there was a subsequent scene where Neil is told he’s not going to fly in space again and he comes home and looks at his house and he can’t quite bring himself to go in because he’s a stranger in his own home.
We actually got feedback from Janet who was like “Well, it wasn’t over. The seeds were there, but we kept trying for a long time.” And ultimately we also decided we’ve got to leave you with a little hope. They’re still reaching for each other. So we re-wrote it and that’s where we wind up.
Not an exclamation point, but...yeah, I guess an ellipsis is what it is.
Selah.
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