Armstrong is 2019 documentary about the life story of Neil Armstrong: from his childhood in Ohio to his first steps on the Moon, and beyond.
Even fifty years on, the triumph of landing men on the Moon remains one of the greatest achievements in our history, as it should be, even as the world’s fascination with space travel has diminished. Because so, there are few who don’t know the name of the first man to make perhaps the most famous first step ever, Neil Armstrong a man whose name has become synonymous with enormous human accomplishment. Naturally, in the decades since, the now famously introverted hero has been subject to near countless retrospectives and exposes, detailing his life and times, including the recent Ryan Gosling drama First Man.
Now comes another documentary, this one from director David Fairhead, who takes great care to tell Armstrong’s story from the astronaut’s own account, often using his own words. They are spoken by Harrison Ford, whose gravley, weathered voice provides astonishing depth and reverence to the narration, reading from Armstrong’s books and letters. This is in tandem with on-camera testimonials from his family, including his wife and sons, along with those who knew him and worked with him. These are touching remembrances of long ago memories, telling of his time at war in Korea, and his transition from test pilot to acceptance into NASA and then beyond.
This is a more personal examination of Armstrong than most, with plenty on the flying side but a lot more about his family life and the consequences of the dedication to his career. He works to raise a family but the skies above are always on his mind. As Gosling did so well in portraying Armstrong as a somewhat reserved character, that comes through even more here as we learn of his pattern of few words with incredible capacity for engineering and piloting. It’s all genuinely thrilling, the film stuffed with archival footage that puts us right into the cockpits and control rooms of what is one of the most exciting journeys any human has ever undergone.
This is not a glamorous, sycophantic effort but rather a poignant and intensely honest account of a man with great burden on his shoulders, troubling person tragedy, and unwavering dedication to a passion that would eventually fly him through space. It’s not manipulative, the temptation certainly there for the filmmakers to saturate this with melodrama, however, thankfully, Fairhead allows Armstrong’s story to build its own momentum as it traces in great detail his participation in the flight to the Moon while dealing with his second life at home. It’s incredibly eye-opening, especially for those still drawn to the wonders of what those in the program were undertaking and the impacts it had on those in the periphery.
Armstrong is an intelligent, educational and moving experience that does more than what First Man could, even as that film worked hard to give greater depth to a curiously withdrawn man who could have taken his fame to levels, well … beyond the atmosphere, deciding instead to keep his life in the shadows. With Armstrong, the lights come on so to speak as we discover far more about him from those who directly knew him, and the results are stunning. Highly recommended.