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This is the emotional height of the film: Neil Armstrong in his spacesuit standing on the lip of a crater on the moon, holding a bracelet with the name of his daughter Karen, who died seven years before his third birthday.
Performed by Ryan Gosling, Armstrong launches the bracelet into the depths of the dark crater, while tears run down his face, a moving farewell scene that ends near the end of "First Man," the biopic Armstrong led by Damien Chazelle and opened Friday across the country. .
There is only one problem. There is no evidence that this has ever happened. Historians say it's probably another example of Hollywood using some dramatic fiction to reinforce the movie's emotional power.
In the authoritative biography that inspired the film, author James Hansen wrote that the memories that Armstrong had taken on the moon were limited – some medallions commemorating the Apollo 11 lunar mission, jewels for his wife, a piece of aircraft from the Wright Brothers and his academic fraternity. pin.
"I did not bring anything else for me," said Armstrong, quoted by Hansen.
His then wife, Janet Armstrong, was apparently upset by the fact that "Armstrong took nothing for his family members, not even for his two boys," wrote Hansen, adding: "Another loved one that Neil apparently did not remember taking anything with her was her daughter Karen. "
Ryan Gosling plays Neil Armstrong and Claire Foy plays his wife, Janet Armstrong, in "First Man". (Daniel McFadden / Universal Pictures)
Bill Barry, NASA's chief historian, said that issues on the scene had been raised recently at a film event at the Kennedy Space Center. The conclusion, he wrote in an email to The Washington Post: "The scene was created for the film, and there is no specific evidence that Neil Armstrong left" commemorative elements "on the moon."
Roger Launius, former chief historian of NASA and former curator at the National Museum of Air and Space, said: "There is no evidence to support the statement according to which he would have left a bracelet of his daughter on the moon ".
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Although apparently fiction, the moment is critical. Died in 2012, Armstrong is portrayed throughout the film as a strong and sturdy pilot, who keeps his cool in all kinds of stressful situations, from the moment his spaceship began to rock during the Gemini 8 mission. until the landing stretched to the surface of the satellite. moon during Apollo 11. He is sober and cool throughout the film – even when told that he was chosen to command the Apollo 11 mission, he responds with nothing more than a nod .
The death of his daughter from a brain tumor, however, constitutes an emotional backlash, a recurring theme in the film that reveals the humanity of Armstrong. After his death, he has a vision of her playing at a party and, at one point, he slips his bracelet into a drawer.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong in 1966 while he was preparing for the Gemini VIII mission. (AP)
Tribute to his memory on the lunar surface would have been poetic, Hansen wrote: "What could have made the first landing more meaningful for" all humanity "than a father honoring the darling memory of her beloved little girl – years old), one of her toys, a garment, a lock of hair?
Other Apollo astronauts paid tribute to their families on the moon. Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon in 1972, wrote his daughter's initials in the lunar dust before leaving. Buzz Aldrin was carrying pictures of his children and Charlie Duke left a picture of his family on the lunar surface.
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Although there is no evidence of this, it is possible that Armstrong has also done something – and that is why Hansen said that he was d & # 39; agree with that in the movie. "We do not know for sure what Neil did," he said in an interview. "Maybe it's a rationalization."
Nevertheless, he stated that the scene took "a dramatic license, of course, and that it was big enough". But he said that the moment "played very well in the film, and this is perhaps the essential for the filmmaker … Sometimes the power of poetry outweighs the uncertainty facts. "
A previous screenwriter also had a similar scene in his version of the script, he said. But instead of a bracelet, Armstrong brought one of Karen's shoes to the moon.
Such a manifestation of emotion, especially during an operational mission, may have displeased the character who said Janet Armstrong in the book, "may be thoughtful, but it does not leave much time for reflection, or least to express it. "
During the film, Armstrong has repeatedly watched the moon with nostalgia. But in an interview in 2001, historian Douglas Brinkley asked if he "would never go out quietly and look at the moon?", Armstrong replied, "No, I did not never did that. "
Lukas Haas, left, Ryan Gosling and Corey Stoll as Apollo 11 astronauts in "First Man". (Daniel McFadden / Universal Pictures)
The former Apollo astronaut, Al Worden, who served as a consultant for the film, said in an interview that the director, Chazelle, was rigorous in ensuring that all the technical details were accurate, the way the astronauts had entered the spacecraft the switches and buttons inside.
"He's gone to a lot of trouble to make it accurate," Worden said. "There is no question about it. He did a superb job. "
He said that Armstrong "would probably like" the film, even though it is described as "a little more distant than it actually was". I have always found it very friendly, very cool and calm most of the time. "
Again, he was an engineer, impartial and fact-oriented. During the 2001 interview, Brinkley asked Armstrong what he thought of The Right Stuff, adapted from Tom Wolfe's book. Armstrong replied that he thought "it was a very good movie".
But he criticized the freedoms Hollywood has taken to document the beginnings of the space age.
Although it may have been entertaining, it was, he said, "a terrible story. Bad people working on bad projects at the wrong time. It does not look like what was really happening.
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