The Aeronauts
Amazon Studios
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten
Director: Tom Harper
Screenwriter: Jack Thorne, story by Tom Harper, Jack Thorne,s 2013 book “Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air.”
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Phoebe Fox, Himesh Patel, Rebecca Front
Screened at: Whitby Hotel, NYC, 11/28/19
Opens: December 6, 2019

Human beings have dreamed of flying since the Greek mythology adventurer Icarus, son of Daedelus, was given wings of wax and feathers. He was warned not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus was ecstatic at his ability to zoom through the air, ignoring the warning by flying close to the sun. His wings melted and he fell to the earth. Well, there’s a fellow willing to risk his life for his dream, while some years later, the Wright brothers took their lives into the hands in 1903 from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in a flight that lasted only minutes. Between the Wright brother and the ancient Greeks, we have conquered flight by way of balloons at least since the mid-18th century. “The Aeronauts” tells us, for example, in a movie inspired by an actual event, that the fictitious character Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) and the actual character James Glaisher, took a chance on breaking a balloon record by flying 38,000 feet, or about seven miles closer to the sun. Instead of melting, however, they wound up freezing their buns off at five degrees of temperature and a scant ability to breathe when they reached a height greater than that of Mount Everest. Too bad the snobbish, insular, stuffy old men with long white beards claiming to be scientists would not think of allowing a woman to take part in the noble experiment—which is why director Tom Harper’s use of Amelia is fiction.

Almost nobody believed that weather could be predicted by any means whatever, but Glaisher, a scientist, is motivated to break barriers of technology while his companion Wren is simply an adventurer. When they take off in 1862—during a year that Americans were battling one another in the War Between the States—they feared only that they might lose the war against nature. There were fearsome winds, rain before they ascended past the clouds, and possibilities that their balloon might burst, but given the physically challenging work especially of Amelia Wren (while her partner was busy writing in the record book), they fought against Mother Nature particularly when they had ascended to the record-breaking height and their breathing was so shallow that they could have died. The movie unfolds virtually in running time, broken up through several flashbacks that indicate the motivations of the duo.

Histrionics are on display now and then. Cheered by a crowd of 10,000 spectators who paid tickets to watch them take off, Amelia would enter the ring with a flourish, turning somersaults and making announcements to the crowd that belie the idea that women would be such exhibitionists during those pre-feminist times. Amelia even threw her Jack Russell Terrier from the balloon at a flight of a thousand feet or so, the automatic parachute opening just as the shocked crowd is about to boo the explorers. If the pigeons that James used to carry messages to earth were real and not animations, the movie could not show in end credits that “no animals were harmed in the making,” since one of the birds had died from the sparse oxygen within the basket.

Director Tom Harper is in his métier, following up last year’s “Wild Rose,” about a Glaswegian dreaming of becoming a country singer. “The Aeronauts” is PG-13, suitable for kids, especially those who when asked what they want to be opt to become astronauts. The film is a wild ride with interesting characters, crack cinematography by George Steele aiming his lenses over several parts of England. Toward the conclusion it looks as though the twosome, inches apart, might kiss—and more—but this is out of the question given the hoped-for size of its movie audience.

101 minutes. © 2019 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B+
Acting – B+
Technical – B+
Overall – B+