Written by Kendall McKinnon, Photo Courtesy of SAVFF
To travel higher into the air than ever before. That was the mission. It seems simple enough to be done in two steps: go up and come back down. But when you’ve got your past and present troubles in the hot-air balloon with you, no amount of weight put off will make this an easy ride.
“The Aeronauts” follows the upward journey of an ambitious young scientist, Mr. James Glashier, and a recently widowed aeronaut, Amelia Wren. Mr. Glashier is convinced that it is possible to predict the weather, but none of his colleagues take this conviction seriously. Refusing to take no for an answer, James manages to persuade Amelia to take him up in her balloon, due to fly as high as possible despite her own fears and her sister’s wishes.
Amelia would enable James’ meteorology research, and James’ lofty expedition would give Amelia the chance to escape from her problems on the ground. The two’s unlikely meeting led to this symbiotic relationship. He was calculation, she was intuition. But this is not where we start. We begin in media res, stuck in a storm with the threat of plunging toward Earth. Director Tom Harper is quick to let us know that this balloon ride is no daydream.
That isn’t to say that this film doesn’t take advantage of the inherent beauty of stillness. Once above the cloud line, James and Amelia find themselves finally in silent skies. Frequent wide shots in the open air give that same silence to those watching the film, the hot-air balloon framed somewhere to the side, among the clouds, tiny and insignificant. Here is where the two are free; here is where they have been waiting for. In the freedom—far from London, far from critics and skeptics and nagging sisters—they scream. Because they can.
“Out there I found the greatest happiness.” I don’t think it matters much which one said it. I know they both would have (but it was Amelia).
The desire to escape into the reaches of the sky is easy to identify with. When things get heavy, I have felt the urge to let a balloon take me wherever it wills. This theme of escapism is central to “The Aeronauts.” During one particularly emotional and revealing moment, the camera closes in on these Latin words: caelum certe patet. The skies lie open.
There are echoes of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” of one searching for a means of escape, only to discover that the sky is the only place big enough for all our troubles. But it doesn’t come without confrontation. Mr. Glashier’s maddening meticulousness still keeps on in the sky, his misplaced priority on his calculations nearly costing him his life. In spite of Amelia’s attempts to put miles between herself and her grief, she is still haunted in the dark and perilous moments high above.
“You have to face your problems here on Earth with the rest of us,” said Amelia’s sister. She meant to convince Amelia to stay, and perhaps she thought she’d failed because she went on anyway, but no. She was right, because no matter how high up the two took the balloon, they always had to come back down.
