Redmayne’s balloonist biopic is a lot of hot air
The Aeronauts
PG cert, 101 min
Dir Tom Harper
Starring Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, Himesh Patel, Anne Reid, Tim Mcinnerny, Phoebe Fox
Hot air balloons are magical things, fragile-looking bubbles that defy gravity with little more than stitched silk and hope. A film about their pioneers, the first people to test human endurance at altitude, should be a giddy delight. Sadly, it gives us spectacle without substance, floating out of the memory as soon as it passes off the screen.
It all looked so good on paper. Eddie Redmayne stars as (real-life) Victorian meteorologist James Glaisher. It is 1862, and in this account, Glaisher is an idealistic youth taking on the science establishment with his radical notions that weather could be forecast if only we had a better understanding of the upper atmosphere. Balloons provide the tool that he needs to climb high enough to find out, but as a nonexpert, he recruits (fictional) aeronaut and grieving widow Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) for his mission.
The pair aim to beat the altitude records previously set by a French team and to return with the scientific data Glaisher needs. Instead, they become two of the first humans to enter the high-altitude “death zone” in a battle for survival five miles up.
Their struggles might have worked as the backbone to a thrilling adventure film, but this drama keeps flashing away from their voyage to focus on the less exciting steps that brought them to this flight. Glaisher fights to convince his colleagues that meteorology is more than a pipe dream, while coming to terms with the losing battle against dementia being fought by his father (Tom Courtenay).
Meanwhile, Wren has to be dragged out of a depressive episode following her husband’s death, and must overcome the lingering fear of heights caused by his loss. Neither strand is particularly compelling or wellwritten, and, frankly, you’d rather they talked it out in the balloon.
It’s also faintly nonsensical if you know any aeronautical history. Glaisher was 53 when he made his 1862 flight, and a garlanded academic rather than a plucky outsider. His companion was the daring Henry Tracey Coxwell rather than a showboating girl who is somehow both a carnival performer and a close relation to the aristocracy.
A few liberties might be permissible if the dynamic between the leads was more, well, dynamic. Instead, Redmayne and Jones both feel like they’re treading water in overly familiar roles: he the awkward intellectual and she the feisty, capable trailblazer. Comparisons with their previous team-up in The Theory of Everything don’t flatter this film.
The story fails to match the breathtaking Cg-assisted visuals, and the film is a particularly disappointing misfire given that director Tom Harper’s last effort, Wild Rose, was so fresh. We know this cast can produce magic together, and that this director can inject pace into unlikely topics – but this one has feet of clay.