The Aeronauts (2019)
Who else is intrigued by early aviation, whether it’s balloons or planes? We think we know so much about it now, but naturally there was a time when we knew next to nothing practical, so going up took some serious cajones, and it wasn’t all a man’s game, either. The Aeronauts, which stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, tells a really cool story about balloonists in 1860s England and the excitment that went along with it. If anyone hasn’t seen this one, they’re in for a treat.
The plot of the film, which is partially fictionalized, is very simple. Amelia Wren is a balloon pilot and a widow, and along with scientist James Glaisher, is all set to hit an altitude record of thirty thousand feet. Naturally, they come across such obstacles as a storm, ice, a clogged gas main, and altitude sickness, and whether or not they get back is naturally in doubt.
Honestly, The Aeronauts gets better every time I see it. It’s at once contained in that most of it takes place in the balloon basket and between a very limited number of characters, but on the other it’s almost scary in its scope. While Amelia and James start out playing to an assembled crowd (well, Amelia does. James just stands there nervously while Amelia cartwheels around the platform and hangs off the balloon’s rigging), they soon realize how isolated they really are, and yell at the empty air a few times at the top of their lungs. The scenery looks amazing, of course.
We also get to know Amelia and James pretty well. Amelia is still grieving the death of her husband, who jumped out of a balloon basket when out of his mind with altitude sickness. She’s so aware of how balloons operate that she can see every contingency almost before it happens, and while she loves flying, she’s a little jaded and disspirited.
James is so passionate about science that when he gets to go up in the balloon with Amelia he’s got loads of equipment with him to measure air pressure and speed. He’s even got carrier pigeons to send messages with. What’s nice is when these two characters meet in the middle, James’s enthusiasm and sense of wonder energize Amelia, who’s not sure she ever wants to go up again. She realizes all over how beautiful it is.
The extreme confinement does have an obvious downside. Seeing as Amelia and James are thirty-eight thousand feet in the air at their highest point, which is about what some commercial jets fly today, when anything goes wrong they have to be the ones to fix it, and this often means literally letting things go because there’s no one to bail them out.
When Amelia falls asleep at the top of the balloon after unclogging the gas main, her eventual slide down the side is particularly nerve-wracking. Meanwhile, James, the one person who could possibly help her, is sacked out in the basket from cold and altitude sickness. The movie effectively communicates the danger by showing it from Amelia’s point of view: We see the scenery whirling and flipping over and over as she slides, and then everything goes black when she hangs from her safety rope.
The Aeronauts zooms through its hundred-minute run time. It looks gorgeous, it’s exciting, and it’s an absolute pleasure. Anyone who sees it will probably lose track of how many times they exhale in relief.
The Aeronauts is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Rating: PG-13.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, Himesh Patel, Vincent Perez, Phoebe Fox
Directed by Tom Harper.
Written by Richard Holmes, Tom Harper, and Jack Thorne.