Pilot Amelia Rennes (Felicity Jones) and scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) find themselves in an epic fight for survival while attempting to make discoveries in a gas balloon.
Let’s face it: even in 2019, no one really takes weather predictions too seriously. Often times it feels like meteorologists are taking a shot in the dark. You’d think they’d get it right in Los Angeles, where it’s sunny 95% of the time – but even here, weather reports aren’t accurate. It was supposed to rain yesterday, and today, but it didn’t. So much for over a Century’s worth of scientific discoveries.
I’m not trying to bash the world’s weather forecasters, or the weather forecasting industry. I’m just pointing out that not much has changed since the events of writer/director Tom Harper’s “The Aeronauts,” which depicts the dawn of the whole weather forecasting business. Mother Nature has Her ways, and we are just mere atom-sized puppets in Her hands, attempting to rationalize Her plans. Never is that more evident than in the wildly-entertaining sequences of the film’s two heroes — pilot Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) and scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) — being tossed around in a gas balloon through stabbing rain and bolts of lightning.
The main plot of “The Aeronauts” — the breaking of the world flight altitude records by reaching a height of 12,000 meters — is based on a real event, performed by scientist/”first real weather forecaster” James Glaisher, although his actual partner was his frequent companion Henry Coxwell. The film’s bold choice to alter history by replacing Henry with a fictional female character — to inspire young girls and prove that women can be just as tough, if not tougher, than men — proved to be controversial among historians. One can see their argument: does fitting into a cultural zeitgeist, no matter how positive the intent behind it, justify a major fabrication of history, the altering of a crucial fact? Will this film be taught in history classes?
Putting aside this debate for a different essay, I will say that Felicity Jones is one of the saving graces of the film. Had I not known about Mr. Coxwell — who (SPOILER ALERT) similarly risked his life to save his fellow scientist — I would have totally believed that Amelia was based on a real person. (Was her first name inspired by Earhart? Just curious.) At the beginning of the film, prior to the ascent, she greets the audience in clown make-up, throwing a parachute-sporting dog at them (a questionable comedic choice, if you ask PETA). She’s masking a deep pain beneath those layers, you see. As she rises, along with James, towards the sky and above the adoring crowd, the actress rises to the occasion as well, handling all the tricky survival sequences, whilst dealing with past trauma.
Redmayne wisely lets the actress take the center stage, his character infinitely less fleshed out than Amelia’s. The film consequently ends up resembling a paean to strong women, a treatise on how they continuously save men’s asses. It’s filled with masterful scenes of man confronting nature: the aforementioned storm, a swarm of butterflies above the clouds, the plummeting down at the end. At times, the film achieves an almost hallucinatory beauty, such as when our heroes gaze at the stars, in the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere, dazed and half-frozen and euphoric. Survival film enthusiasts, as well as adventure fans, will find much to love here.
Where the film sags is in the forced flashback sequences — anyone following my reviews knows I LOVE those — interspersed throughout the film and sucking all the air out of its central balloon. The characters’ backgrounds are clichéd, monotonous and jarring. Do we really need to see our heroes dancing (although the costumes are glorious, indeed) and frolicking about prior to the flight? It’s when Amelia’s frostbitten fingers dig deep underneath the ropes of a suspended balloon at 35,000 feet – that’s when the film achieves true lift-off.
Weather forecasts may still not be 100% accurate, but what James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell/Amelia Wren achieved was way more important. They, like so many adventurers before and after them, broke through what humanity deemed impossible, reached for the unknown, and stumbled upon unexpected discoveries in the process. It’s folks like this that pave the way for moon landings and Everest-climbings. Harper may pile on the sentimentality a bit too thickly, yet his crowdpleaser pays tribute to true heroes, be it real or made-up.
In Theaters Friday, December 6th and on Prime Video December 20th
