“First Man,” Damien Chazelle’s turbulent and transporting drama about Neil Armstrong and his journey through the space program, was assailed within a day of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last August.
Voices from the right, who attacked Chazelle for having made a film about the moon landing that left out the astronauts planting the American flag on the lunar surface, accused “First Man” of trivializing American values, of making too little of its old-fashioned patriotic heroism.
More recently, voices from the left have attacked Chazelle for creating a lost-in-the-past epic about white men and their achievements at the expense of everything (and everyone) else.
In essence, they’ve accused “First Man” of making too much of its old-fashioned patriotic heroism.It used to be that you had to wait for Harvey Weinstein to take down your movie during awards season.
Now, social media does the job just fine.
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