The Aeronauts

Filmology Rating: 3 out of 4

*The Aeronauts was seen at the Twin Cities Film Fest. The film will be in limited release starting December *

Adventure films seem hard to come by lately, we have been given great films like The Lost City of Z and Life of Pi, but the genre seems to be coming to a deadly halt.  The Aeronauts, directed by Tom Harper, might be one of the last breaths for this genre but sadly the genre won’t be dying at its strongest heights.  

In 1862, London, Amelia Wren, played by Felicity Jones, and James Glaisher, played by Eddie Redmayne, hope to fly to new heights in an air balloon.  The duo hope to make new scientific discoveries while breaking all records before them but Mother Nature might have other plans for the adventurous team.  

From the moment the balloon takes flight you quickly realize that you are in for a special film, it’s the type that everyone claims isn’t made anymore.  It’s the small drama that features an all-star cast, or in this case has a duo which is beloved in the indie film circuit, dealing with personal goals rather than the big superhero explosions that have overtaken the silver screen.  This is not to be dismissive of the superhero genre, as longtime readers will know I adore that medium of storytelling; it’s simply the pleasure of enjoying smaller films that can feel more intimate and help you believe in the impossible.  Every moment the film focuses on the duo in the balloon, the film is full of tension and suspense. Danger could strike at any moment and the consequences for any tiny miscalculation could have devastating consequences; needless to say a battle with Mother Nature never seems to go well and that makes for compelling cinema.  

The aspect that starts to deflate the film is when the focus shifts from the balloon to the years before the exploration.  The nonlinear manner in which the film decides to tell it’s story cuts all of the tension and the importance of the journey.  If the film wanted to tell the backstory about why Amelia Wren and James Glaisher decided to go on their journey, then it should have been told in a linear manner.  Not only would we know the motivations of the characters from the beginning but we would then be able to fully impacted by the actions taking place on the balloon instead of cutting the tension by cutting to previous events.  The backstory is interesting enough that it could and should have carried the beginning of the film, it’s just not interesting when more life and death stakes are in play.  

Since the film features such a small cast, those in the film need to work phenomenally well and luckily for the film they do.  While Tom Harper isn’t able to capture the raw performance that he was able to capture from Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose, he still helps reinstate that Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne are stars who are capable of carrying a film no matter the subject matter.  It’s great to see Redmayne in a film that shows that he can actually act, for those who have only seen the Fantastic Beasts films and Jupiter Ascending you will have an epiphany about his acting.  Redmayne is not the one note actor that many know him for being and he can help carry a film when he is given the right material and director to work with.  As for Jones, she is the true star of this film as she should be in any film she is in. Jones has always given raw emotional performances, Like Crazy and The Theory of Everything, and her performance in this film is no different.  The inner demons that she has are on display at all times but watching someone not let them give into the inner demons is reassuring to see, yes it’s a cliche saying but it’s nice to see someone’s demons not controlling them.  

Hopefully this film will help cinematographer George Steel break out since he captured some breathtaking imagery.  Steel has worked on other Tom Harper projects such as The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death and Wild Rose,  but with The Aeronauts he has hit a new level. Most scenes take place in the air balloon so having clever ways to shoot within that balloon must have been challenging for Steel.  He continuously came up with ways to shoot so the scenes never became repetitive and dull. The film features many shots with the balloon against the sprawling blue sky that not only cements how small we truly are on this planet but how we continuously want to fill our hunger for knowledge and beauty.  While this might sound like a slant to most people, I could see many images from this film being a background on my computer. Just thinking about some of the images brings a sense of serenity that seems to be getting hard to find nowadays.  

While The Aeronauts never reaches the soaring heights that it believes it does, the balloon still glides across the sky with an ease that most films wish they could achieve. 

Rating: See It 

-Jonny G