2/27/2023 0 Comments Amelia wren![]() In Ad Astra it’s a surprise when some people die, because it’s not like other movies. The best stunt is when Amelia climbs up the side of the balloon to the top, though it’s not that exciting because you know they’ll survive. The story is really interesting and Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are really good together. But they go so high that when he gets out the last pigeon and throws it over the side to fly away – SPOILER ALERT! – it’s already dead and falls in a straight line. James also has pigeons to take his results back to the Royal Society in case he and Amelia die trying to beat the record. I guessed it would have a parachute though I was worried the parachute wouldn’t open but it did and THE DOG WAS FINE. James is annoyed she’s brought the dog but he hands it over… and she throws it out of the basket. There are two really good animal jokes – SPOILER ALERT! – first as the balloon takes off and everyone is watching and waving them off, she asks James to hand her her little dog. He’s trying to do experiments to help him with weather forecasts and the men at the Royal Society should have treated him more seriously – I wanted him to do well to prove them all wrong. She is brave and gets things done, but he just wants to stick to his plan. And Wren, a composite of several female balloonists of the period, is a widow who still mourns the death of her husband (Vincent Perez) and must fight to be taken seriously in a man’s game.The Aeronauts is set in 1862 in England when Queen Victoria rules, and it’s amazing to think that in 100 years’ time people would be walking on the moon.Ī balloonist called Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) and a scientist called James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) go up in her balloon, and break the world altitude record. Flashbacks show Glaisher beating his head against the wall of scientific indifference to his theories and the worsening case of dementia afflicting his father (Tom Courtenay). Credit the filmmakers for not drumming up a bogus romance between the two, though they do exchange a few longing looks between the sharing of backstories. When James and Amelia suffer the effects of hypoxia from the thinness of oxygen in the air, you sweat it out with them. Redmayne and Jones have enormous charm and fully commit to the demands of their roles. If you can swallow the gender fudging, the movie comes through admirably as a rousing adventure. Theose interested in the real story should grab the 2013 book, Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air, in which historian Richard Holmes detailed the flight of Glaisher and the not-ready-for-primetime Coxwell, whose considerable contributions are apparently deemed fake news when it comes to boosting the box-office. In terms of documented fact, however, the film takes one liberty after another. In commercial terms, it’s a breathlessly entertaining trade-off. The actual 1862 balloon flight into the London skies saw Glaisher accompanied by the decidedly less sexy Henry Coxwell, a noted British aeronaut who risked danger, numbing cold and loss of consciousness by ascending more than 37,000 feet, a record at the time, and saving Glaisher’s life in the process. ![]() ![]() ![]() And Thorne’s knack for fantasy is goosed by director Tom Harper, of TV’s Peaky Blinders and War and Peace. Since he knows nothing about the perils of the mission, James teams up with Amelia Wren (Jones), who has turned the process into a profitable circus act by playing up to the crowd - doing handstands before climbing into the balloon’s wicker basket and taking along her tiny dog to milk applause.Īmelia, sadly, is a figment of the imagination of screenwriter Jack Thorne, who wrote Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for the stage. Redmayne plays real-life British meteorologist James Glaisher, who thinks he can defy the skeptics and advance his research in weather by going up, up and away in a hot-air balloon. The film reunites Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, who previously costarred as Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane in The Theory of Everything (both were nominated for an Oscar only he won the trophy). What do you say about a 19th-century ballooning movie that looks great in the air but doesn’t stick the emotional landing? That’s the problem with The Aeronauts, one of those “based on a true story” undertakings that are only partly true. ![]()
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