What to watch
Netflix’s ownership of movies like Marriage Story, The Irishman and The Two Popes seem to have done its awards season prospects no harm, but things have been a little bleaker over on Amazon Prime Video.
Jillian Bell’s brilliant performance in Brittany Runs a Marathon has been pretty much overlooked, while star-studded political drama The Report received scant recognition, despite some glowing reviews.
But perhaps the biggest casualty of the past few months has to be British period adventure The Aeronauts.
Very much a big-screen story, complete with impressive special effects, it only received a very limited release in cinemas (it was part of November’s British Film Festival in New Zealand), before winding up on the global streaming service. That’s a shame because this reuniting of The Theory of Everything stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones loses something on a smaller canvas.
Inspired by real-life events, writer-director Tom Harper’s (Wild Rose, TV’s most recent War and Peace adaptation) taut and terrific 1860s-set tale follows the fortunes of scientist James Glaisher (Redmayne) and hot air balloon pilot Amelia Rennes (Jones), as they attempt to go higher than any human before them.
Glaisher believes that a better understanding of the Earth’s atmosphere could advance meteorology by decades.
However, with his claims of being able to predict the weather met with scorn by most of the scientific community, he’s had to turn his experiment into a world record attempt and enlist the crowdpleasing, showstopping skills of Rennes.
The pair initially clash – Glaisher is unimpressed by her antics and she is concerned about his focus on science rather than safety. Already somewhat traumatised by a previous flight, Rennes begins to fear that history may be about to repeat itself.
While playing rather fast and loose with history (Glaisher’s helmer for his world record ascent attempt in 1862 was actually one Henry Tracey Coxwell and Rennes is a fictional creation, apparently inspired by the likes of Frenchwoman Sophie Blanchard), Harper and co-writer Jack Thorne (Wonder, The Virtues) do a magnificent job of making the audience care about the characters, and placing the viewing in the centre of the action.
It’s hard not to feel a twinge of vertigo (and general anxiety) as our intrepid pair battle a storm, equipment malfunctions, freezing temperatures and oxygen deprivation. Playing out the sometimes terror-inducing, heartstopping drama in real-time (peppered with flashbacks to the duo’s respective journeys to the basket) serves to heighten things an extra notch.
Also aiding engagement immensely is the chemistry between Jones and Redmayne. The pair spark magnificently, almost screwball comedy-style, before bonding in the intense atmosphere as their ‘‘experiment’’ begins to go pear-shaped.
A kind of Touching the Void-meets-Gravity – with sumptuous costuming – The Aeronauts is well-worth seeking out.