THE AERONAUTS
Friends in high places…
Is the balloon thriller just a lot of hot air?
OUT 4 NOVEMBER
Given their chemistry as Stephen and Jane Hawking in 2014’s The Theory Of Everything, it’s no surprise to see Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones reunite in this Victorian ballooning drama, a charming adventure with its fair share of soaring moments. What a shame it lacks the emotional ballast to repeat that earlier picture’s Oscar-winning success.
Redmayne again plays a real-life scientist: meteorologist James Glaisher, intent on proving it’s possible to predict the weather if one can get high enough to take readings of the atmosphere. Which is where Jones’ fictional aeronaut Amelia Wren and her hot-air balloon comes in. At first, she refuses to help
– The Aeronauts follows every rule of screenwriting as rigorously as Glaisher checks his instruments and logs the results – but it’s not long before the mismatched pair (he’s a sombre fusspot, she’s a dazzling showwoman) soar up, up and away to meet-cute at 20,000ft.
The Aeronauts begins with Glaisher (who in real life conducted the flight with colleague Henry Coxwell) and Wren clambering into the basket to rise above a cheering, waving crowd. We’re treated to some stunning aerial views of the River Thames snaking through smoke-stacked London before the first of several flashbacks fills in the backstory. It’s standard stuff (pompous peers, personal trauma) and you can almost hear the fingers of screenwriter Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials) tapping the keyboard as he metes out each revelation for maximum impact.
But when the action cuts back to the balloon rising higher and higher, the excitement likewise ratchets: lightning forks through black, roiling clouds that finally drop away to reveal a blue and breathless sky; a swarm of yellow butterflies engulf our gawping heroes at 17,000 feet; the equipment cakes dangerously with ice; far below, the clouds stretch out like snowscapes as far as the eye can see; and the glimmering stars descend until they can almost be touched. It all makes for a journey that’s close to being as visually dazzling as the one taken by Brad Pitt in Ad Astra, meaning each of those earthbound flashbacks act as sandbags you’ll wish you could cast over the side.
The kind of film that critics like to describe as ‘handsomely mounted’, The Aeronauts also sees Harper (Wild Rose, Peaky Blinders) offer up several action sequences that fall somewhere between surprisingly robust and faintly ludicrous. Similarly, the film lands between two stools, gliding into awards-baiting territory one minute and accelerating to become Fast & Furious: The Victorian Years the next. It makes for a somewhat bumpy ride, but one worth taking. Jamie Graham