Review 531: The Aeronauts
The Aeronauts is an astonishingly, nail-biting, tense and spectacular biographical adventure film one that floats along the strength and chemistry of its two leads.
Inspired by the book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air by Richard Holmes, Daredevil pilot Amelia Rennes (Felicity Jones) and weather scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) find themselves in an epic for survival while attempting to make discoveries in a gas ballon.
The plot is just extraordinary. The whole ballon ride that Rennes and Glaisher go on throughout the 101 minute narrative is almost like a sea voyage and the film intelligently makes great use of a non-linear narrative to help us as an audience get to know them as people. Rennes and Glaisher makes new discoveries just like Columbus did when he discovered the America's.
At its core, The Aeronauts is a story about human achievement: James Glaisher and Amelia Rennes are real people who are at war with the skies.
It’s also a story about Hope, Optimism and the feeling that anything is possible.
Even the ballon is its own metaphor, even though its gigantic to Glaisher and Rennes as people, to the skies themselves its nothing.
As Rennes put it "We took to the skies in the name of discovery. To find something new; To change the world. But you don't change the world simply by looking at it. You change it through the way you choose to live in it."
Director Tom Harper's direction is beautifully elegant, his use of wides and close ups when necessary make for an absolutely tense experience and lend itself to a spectacular viewing experience.
The cinematography is beautifully stunning and captures the beauty and the vastness of the open sky.
The scenery is breathtaking, the lighting is absolutely fabulous, the props are well crafted, the production design is excellent, the make up is rich and beautifully detailed, the score by Steven Price is beautiful, there are amazingly crafted scenes of tension, the
There are fine performances all round from the cast, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are fabulous in their roles playing James Glaisher and Amelia Rennes respectively. In a lot of ways, they are each others Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. In short, Glaisher's the believer and Rennes' the sceptic.
The two compliment each other superbly as a result. On the one hand, Amelia Rennes is one of the great Aeronauts of her time and yet she is a social outcast in that time. She's earthbound as a widow with the constraints of Victorian Society which is troubling for her as she doesn't like to be contained or play by the rules.
James Glaisher, on the other hand, is a young passionate meteorologist who has to fight for respect amongst his piers in the sci fi community. He's driven to take to the skies to discover things about the air.
At first there's a lot of conflict between them and they don't necessarily agree on a lot of things but as the film progresses and their journey goes on, they come to understand each other and fall in love with their differences.
I've never met anybody quite like James Glaisher in a movie or in real life for that matter before.
Redmayne expertly captures his eccentricities, his passion and his absolute determination to push the boundaries of conventional behaviour for Victorian/Edwardian times.
Hamish Patel provides a great deal of support to the film playing Glaisher's friend, John Trew and research partner who
Tom Courtney and Anne Reid also have fun little bit parts playing Arthur, James Glaisher amnesiac father and his mother, Ethel. Both of whom deliver gentle and sympatheticly charming performances
The Aeronauts is a soaring triumph to quote Yahoo Movies, 4.5/5.
The Anonymous Critic.
Inspired by the book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air by Richard Holmes, Daredevil pilot Amelia Rennes (Felicity Jones) and weather scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) find themselves in an epic for survival while attempting to make discoveries in a gas ballon.
The plot is just extraordinary. The whole ballon ride that Rennes and Glaisher go on throughout the 101 minute narrative is almost like a sea voyage and the film intelligently makes great use of a non-linear narrative to help us as an audience get to know them as people. Rennes and Glaisher makes new discoveries just like Columbus did when he discovered the America's.
At its core, The Aeronauts is a story about human achievement: James Glaisher and Amelia Rennes are real people who are at war with the skies.
It’s also a story about Hope, Optimism and the feeling that anything is possible.
Even the ballon is its own metaphor, even though its gigantic to Glaisher and Rennes as people, to the skies themselves its nothing.
As Rennes put it "We took to the skies in the name of discovery. To find something new; To change the world. But you don't change the world simply by looking at it. You change it through the way you choose to live in it."
Director Tom Harper's direction is beautifully elegant, his use of wides and close ups when necessary make for an absolutely tense experience and lend itself to a spectacular viewing experience.
The cinematography is beautifully stunning and captures the beauty and the vastness of the open sky.
The scenery is breathtaking, the lighting is absolutely fabulous, the props are well crafted, the production design is excellent, the make up is rich and beautifully detailed, the score by Steven Price is beautiful, there are amazingly crafted scenes of tension, the
There are fine performances all round from the cast, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are fabulous in their roles playing James Glaisher and Amelia Rennes respectively. In a lot of ways, they are each others Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. In short, Glaisher's the believer and Rennes' the sceptic.
The two compliment each other superbly as a result. On the one hand, Amelia Rennes is one of the great Aeronauts of her time and yet she is a social outcast in that time. She's earthbound as a widow with the constraints of Victorian Society which is troubling for her as she doesn't like to be contained or play by the rules.
James Glaisher, on the other hand, is a young passionate meteorologist who has to fight for respect amongst his piers in the sci fi community. He's driven to take to the skies to discover things about the air.
At first there's a lot of conflict between them and they don't necessarily agree on a lot of things but as the film progresses and their journey goes on, they come to understand each other and fall in love with their differences.
I've never met anybody quite like James Glaisher in a movie or in real life for that matter before.
Redmayne expertly captures his eccentricities, his passion and his absolute determination to push the boundaries of conventional behaviour for Victorian/Edwardian times.
Hamish Patel provides a great deal of support to the film playing Glaisher's friend, John Trew and research partner who
Tom Courtney and Anne Reid also have fun little bit parts playing Arthur, James Glaisher amnesiac father and his mother, Ethel. Both of whom deliver gentle and sympatheticly charming performances
The Aeronauts is a soaring triumph to quote Yahoo Movies, 4.5/5.
The Anonymous Critic.
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