I went to see the film “First Man” this weekend, directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon.
It was inspirational on many levels.
First, the sheer magnitude of the accomplishments: yes, the film, but even more — as the film reminds us — what we achieved in space. You get an inkling from Chazelle’s very deliberate decisions to give us an astronaut’s-eye view of the program, from incredibly shaky footage, loud and confusing audio, and vistas no better than the astronauts got through tiny windows… until it goes all silent and IMAX when we reach the Moon.
You understand how, strapped into tiny capsules atop enormous rockets, our astronauts sometimes felt, as one said,“like a rat being shaken by a very large terrier” — and you can’t help thinking, “These guys were even braver — or crazier — than I thought.”
It gives another perspective on what writer Tom Wolfe labeled “The Right Stuff” — stoic and calm in the face of unimaginable danger.
The big question of those days is also the big question of the film. As a reporter puts it, at one point: “Do you ever question whether the program is worth the cost, in money or in lives?”
Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I was 15 when Armstrong became the “First Man” to set foot on the Moon. But that landmark event came just one year after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which had touched off four straight days of rioting, sending blocks of our inner-city up in smoke.
So I sympathized with contemporary critics who insisted that our Space Race was costing the nation far too much, using up money that was urgently needed here at home.
As an adult, I have begun to reconsider. The Space Race is long since over and done, but we have at least as much misery and poverty as ever.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized how completely the mission to conquer space was woven through the fabric of our daily lives. It was in the TV programs we watched, from “The Jetsons” to “Lost in Space;” it informed our architecture (a public library whose entrance resembled a space ship); it even packaged our junk food (astronaut ice cream!).
Nor did I realize how bereft we have been, without it.
The loss feels especially poignant here on Long Island, in what inhabitants used to call “NASA County,” where so many of our nation’s aircraft were designed and built, up to and including the Lunar Excursion Module — the “Eagle” of Armstrong’s proud declaration, “The Eagle has landed.”
We need a mission. It can be a Space Race. It could be Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of finally “rising up and living out the true meaning of our creed.” It could be starting the equivalent of a Manhattan Project to conquer and reverse climate change.
We should do one or all of these things for the same reason President Kennedy started the space program: “We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
And because we need them.
I believe that something in us curdles when our only mission is just getting through the day. “A woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
What happens when we have no big, inspiring mission? Well, look around. What is our President’s biggest goal? Returning to the past!
And while there may be many cultures that are able to live in the shadow of former greatness (Rome; Athens; France)… we are not among them.
America has always been about the future. But recently, we seem to have stopped believing. I don’t know whether that’s because of climate change, or the supposed “end” of the white majority — both of which trends are converging now, rather shockingly, on 2040 or 2043 — but it is having terrible effects.
Because when you stop believing in the possibility of a better day just over the horizon, you start thinking, “This is all there is.” And the day after that, you are scrabbling, each against all, over who gets how big a slice of the pie. Throwing people out of the lifeboat. As if that will somehow save you from your fate.
“First Man” brought me to patriotic tears, because it showed me how starved I am for a mission to believe in, today. Are you listening, contenders for 2020? It’s literally a matter of life and death.
