Belated Movie Reviews

The Aeronauts (2019), “inspired by true events,” is the story of how the first meteorologist, astronomer James Glaisher, managed to study “the air”, and his first ascent by balloon. His pilot? The fictional widow Amelia Wren, trained by her late husband, Pierre. Since funding is scarce, she’s the one with all the glitz, while Glaisher is all business, bringing all of his science gear in preference to his oilskins, not willing to give up an iota of data just because his fingers might become a trifle cold. A high point comes when she tosses her dog from the ascending balloon.

Quite the guy.

Flashbacks interspersing the main story tell us Glaisher’s and Wren’s backstories, Glaisher in the traditional role of a man with huge plans which get the horse’s laugh from his colleagues at the Royal Academy, while Wren must wrestle with the social restraints put on women during the Victorian period of the 1860s, especially those who’ve been widowed. The movie wisely withholds the reason Wren is reluctant to pilot Glaisher’s balloon, but we do eventually learn that her husband sacrificed himself to save her in a balloon accident.

But the primary story is their ascent. Very little was known of the atmosphere at the time, so we see them learn of the various layers and how they vary in terms of temperature and movement; they survive the theatrical violence of a lightning storm; and then wrestle with the far more deceitful opponents of freezing temperatures and hypoxia. All the while, Glaisher works with his instruments and his freezing hands, as well as his sense of inferiority brought on by his humble upbringing.

Wren is in a worse place, between memories of her late husband and a stubbornly obstreperous passenger who didn’t bring his heavy weather gear. When hypoxia comes into play, and she finds the balloon’s vent is frozen shut, it’s up to her to find her way to the top of the balloon and undo the damage. This is quite gripping.

On the way precipitously down, though, it’s Glaisher’s turn to recognize that the heaviest item on the balloon is the basket itself, and he’s the one who keeps Wren from sacrificing herself, cuts the basket free, and the converts the balloon into … well, that would be telling. But it warmed my heart to see such cleverness.

And, truth be told, my heart needed a bit of warming at that point. For all that the story is well-written and well-told, the acting mostly excellent (actually, Redmayne reminded me of other movies I’ve seen him in, and not in a good way), and that special effects were spot-on, I was left feeling that the story seemed a trifle warmed-over. While it’s not wrong to use elements over and over again, something unique must come out of it, and that part wasn’t at all clear. I’m not quite sure what that might have been better in this instance, but in some ways this felt just a bit like yesterday’s spaghetti leftovers. Not bad today, but not as good as yesterday.