'A week after our editing-room meeting, the director is in a control room at Sony's Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage. He's in his element here, even if his eyes are dark pools and two stress pimples have broken out on his forehead. On the other side of a glass wall, 80 ?or 90 musicians are tuning up, about to record the music for some of the more dramatic moments of First Man. Hurwitz is conducting, and he and Chazelle exchange brief verbal shorthand over an intercom.

"There's that long crescendo …" Chazelle starts.

"We're still giving the second half of the note a dive," Hurwitz cuts in. Then, to his musicians: "Everybody who has a 16th note, touch that downbeat before letting go. It can be almost a niente."

The music soars as, onscreen, a car sweeps across the city at night and Gosling (as Armstrong) stares out the window at the passing landscape, knowing he's leaving his wife for what might ?be the last time.