The Aeronauts film review

Thanks to See It First, I went to see this as a preview screening with my husband a couple of weeks back at the VUE cinema at The Light in Leeds.

IMDB says: Pilot Amelia Wren (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.

In this action, adventure, biography film directed by Tom Harper (Wild Rose, TVs Peaky Blinders) and written by Harper and Jack Thorne (Wonder, TVs National Treasure), Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) stars as daredevil pilot Amelia Wren and Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl, The Theory of Everything) scientist James Glaisher. It also features an excellent score The Aeronauts Waltz by Jack Arnold (Wild Rose, Albatross). In 1862 the pair teamed up to advance human knowledge of the weather and fly higher than anyone in history. Facing physical and emotional challenges in the thin air, the unlikely duo find their place in the world.

Glaisher's friend John Trew is played by Himesh Patel (Yesterday, TVs Eastenders) who I felt was underused in the film, as were many others including Tim McInnery (Notting Hill, Eddie the Eagle) one of the academics who band together to try and foil Glaisher's plan and Robert Glenister (Live by Night, TVs Paranoid) who is far too brief a player.

The main action focuses around the flight, from the take off where Wren plays to the gathered crowd, including dropping her dog from the balloon, and the perils of hypothermia and other physical hazards. As a viewer, I really felt that I lived the journey with them, the ups, the downs and the threats to life as I willed them to both achieve their objectives and survive. My husband did this even more so, as it turns out he has a problem with heights as seen from a hot air balloon in a film - I don't think I will ever buy him a gift of a flight in real life - as he spent most of the movie feeling like he himself was in jeopardy.

There are two sub-plots, one around Wren's fellow pilot and deceased husband Pierre Rennes (Queen of the Damned, Cyrano de Bergerac) and the other, Glaisher's relationship with his father Arthur (Tom Courtenay: Doctor Zhivago, Let Him Have It) who is slipping into the clutches of dementia, which I found particularly moving.

Although I enjoyed the film, there were two problems for me, I understand that to lose height they had to jettison all of the equipment but one: how dangerous is this for anyone who happens to be on the ground when all of it lands and two, why did Wren not undertake this technique when she was on the journey with her husband? I presume we are to assume that the flight is over water or unoccupied land (they land in what appears to be a wooded field) and that only Glaisher had the solution to this scientific dilemma. But for me it spoiled what was otherwise a great action film. I know a lot of other reviewers have difficulties with the historical inconsistancies, but when a film informs me it is inspired by a true adventure I feel it asks me to supsend belief in facts in order to enhance the viewing pleasure. Yes, it would have been nice to be historically accurate, but would it have been as much fun? For me the feisty heroine and intense adventure was enough.

7/10

IMDB Trivia: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones actually flew in the hot air balloon seen within the film to roughly 8,000 feet, realistically replicating the James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell flight that happened on 5th September 1862. Eddie Redmayne had a small injury filming a scene on the air balloon and badly sprained an ankle. He had to use a crutch and a cast for a few days. James Glaisher was a real English meteorologist who is remembered for his pioneering work as a balloonist. Between 1862 and 1866 he made numerous ascents to measure the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere at its highest levels. With his co-pilot aeronaut Henry Tracey Coxwell, they broke the world record for altitude on September 5, 1862. Coxwell is omitted from the film, and replaced with the fictional Amelia Wren. The Wren character draws some inspiration from various real women including Sophie Blanchard, a French aeronaut who was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist between 1804 and her death in 1819.

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