BEFORE: Well, I had a little time yesterday - really, I've got nothing BUT time until the lockdown ends and I can go back to work - so I took a stab at figuring out what I'm going to watch after Father's Day, what's going to get me to the next holiday, July 4. I don't know what civilization will be like then, but at least I know how many days it is between June 20 and July 4. And I was successful in finding a path, in fact I found three paths, so I may be a little TOO good at linking films - or I have too many options in my database, having added a ton of films lately from all the streaming platforms. Now I'll have to decide which path I want to take, perhaps the one that clears the most films on DVD and my DVR, which shortens the main watchlist, and allows me to add new ones. That's another (mostly) crime-based set of films, will I be ready for that again after a number of family-based dramas? Only time will tell.
Tom Courtenay carries over from "The Dresser", though he's 36 years older here - let's hear it for British actors with very long careers, they make the way I organize my viewings possible. He'll be here tomorrow, too, and I've resigned myself to dipping a bit into the stockpile of next year's romance films in order to get where I need to be on Mother's Day. There are still two too many films scheduled though, and I still can't decide which two to cut, and time is running out.
THE PLOT: Balloon pilot Amelia Wren and scientist James Glaisher find themselves in an epic fight for survival while attempting to make discoveries in a gas balloon in the 1860's.
AFTER: This is another film that campaigned HEAVILY during awards nomination season, and got zero Oscar noms as a result. It's going to be interesting to see what happens at the end of this year, assuming that they can re-open theaters at some point and some new releases can come out. At the moment I feel like I'm making some headway, because I'm still crossing movies off my list and nothing new is being released to replace what I'm watching. That could change, however, if the studios start releasing their films directly to streaming platforms - the Academy has decided to waive the rule (this year only) that says that films must have a theatrical release before streaming in order to qualify for the Oscars. It makes sense, not only because nobody knows for sure when people will be able to return to going out to the movies, but because last year the Academy was streaming eligible films for Academy members on their own site, so it seems a bit hypocritical to ding a new release for going to streaming when the Academy themselves was streaming most of the nominated films. So, is streaming good for the Oscars or is it bad? It's sort of been a bit of both.
Maybe one could say that Amazon Studios has had something of an uphill battle where the Oscars are concerned. "The Report" was another one of their films that didn't seem to connect with voters, same goes for "Late Night" and "Honey Boy", and I think "The Goldfinch" too. I don't think they've had anything nominated since "The Big Sick", and "Manchester by the Sea" was their only film that won an Oscar. My guess would be that they've been trying to make arty films in the hope of getting nominated, when a better strategy would just be to make BETTER films. I know that's not easy, if it were, anybody could do it. But the success of "Parasite" proves that if you make a better film (I assume), the voters will find it. Making stuffy films about poets and people who ride in hot-air balloons may not be the best way to connect with today's Academy voters, I suspect.
But let me focus on "The Aeronauts", which re-unites the stars of "The Theory of Everything", and also features a "Star Wars" actress, Felicity Jones, so this could have been another film that would have worked well on May 4. I think I've got Keira Knightley coming up in 2 days, so that's going to make at least three "Star Wars" actors this week. (And I know them when I see them, I just added two more autographs to my collection, Simon Pegg and Domhnall Gleeson, bringing my total up to 120.). There are some notable movie sins committed in "The Aeronauts", one is the over-use of flashbacks - once the two leads get up in this hot-air balloon, I guess somebody felt that their flight would be too boring, so the film flashes back several times to show us pieces of their pasts. Traveling over a certain building reminds James of a time he stood on that building's roof to watch a different balloon travel across the sky, and Amelia often flashes back to a fateful balloon trip she took with her husband. Since they're no longer together, let's just say they had a falling out. (Sorry.).
Yes, it may have taken a great deal of convincing to get her up in a balloon again, but there's conflicting information here - some later flashback scenes show her depressed after her husband's death, and staying in bed, unable to face the world, but the opening scene shows her dressed up, happily riding on top of a carriage for the crowd at the airfield, willing to put on a show to entertain the public. Well, which is it, is she happy or depressed? What, exactly, convinced her to get up in a balloon again after the previous disaster? Anyway, you know how I feel about movies that jump around too much in time without a good enough reason. Here the story made the mistake of starting with the launch scene, so we know when we see the flashbacks that she's definitely going to go on another balloon trip, so all suspense or mystery about this is immediately dispelled, and those scenes showing her equivocating about it are rendered nearly useless. Same goes for the flashbacks of James pitching his need to go up in a balloon with weather equipment to the Royal Society of Soon-to-be Outdated Science", and though they harumph at his proposal, we already know he's going to make it happen, because we've already seen it. Sorry, there's just not enough justification for a non-linear narrative here.
Another sin is re-casting such a prominent role in order to have a female lead character. Let's be real, there were no female balloon pilots in the 1860's, not in the UK, not in France, nowhere. The story this is based on, "Falling Upward", tells the story of James Glaisher and pilot Henry Coxwell, and this film's balloon pilot, Amelia, is a fictional character. Same goes for the character of James' scientist friend, John Trew, clearly played by an actor of Indian descent. A person of color in a prominent position in 1860's London? Highly doubtful. This is one of those wishful thinking casting decisions, like they did the year before in "Mary Queen of Scots". Casting more women or modern people of color in roles from the 1500's or 1800's doesn't change the sexism and racism inherent to those eras, after all.
It is true, however, that there were balloons flown in the 1860's that broke altitude records, reaching somewhere between 30,000 to 36,000 feet - however, I don't really know enough about the science of that era to even know how THEY knew how high they were. For that matter, I have no idea how an altimeter in a modern airplane works, either. I don't even want to know how high up I am when I'm in a plane - I don't do well with heights in general, not even being in tall buildings. I've been to the top of the Sears Tower, the CN Tower, and the old World Trade Center back in the day, but I'm never comfortable while I'm high up in a skyscraper. A hot-air balloon ride wouldn't ever be in the cards for me, I'd be nervous the whole time just wondering how close that wicker basket would be to breaking.
So, despite some beautiful aerial photography in this film (or perhaps it's all CGI clouds and scenery, I'm not sure...) I just couldn't relax and enjoy this movie's flight scenes. Too much danger, too much tension, too many times one or both of these aeronauts fell out of the basket and had to climb back up via a rope. I also didn't really understand the mechanics of the flight, like I know they had a number of sandbags and that's how they controlled the weight of the balloon, and therefore the rise and fall of it, but wasn't there danger involved in dropping sandbags randomly out of their balloon? Like what if one of those sandbags landed on somebody below and killed them? Even back then, when there were fewer people living in the U.K., there was still a non-zero chance that a sandbag would hit someone or something important, so how rude was it for them to not empty the bags first? And how many people in the 1860's died from random dropped-sandbag incidents? Things got much worse after they invented commercial airliners that could drop fuel or human waste on people, but I think for many years, the big threat to people on the ground was sandbags from balloons when the balloon pilots were too high up to see the earth.
They make a big deal near the start of the film about introducing another new invention, the parachute. But if they had those, then why the hell didn't the aeronauts have them handy on board their balloon? That could have saved us all some stress in the later part of the film, just saying. Also, NITPICK POINT. They've got room and weight for a box of pigeons, but not parachutes?
I'm also not really understanding how being high up in a balloon would ultimately lead to being able to predict the weather. Who cares what temperature and humidity it is at 30,000 feet, when the weather that people want to know about is at ground level? Anyway, I think we would have gotten there in time some other way, rather than breaching the upper atmosphere in a balloon - eventually weather technology would have improved without this, right? I mean, even now when the meteorologists say there's a 75% chance of rain, they're able to come up with this figure by comparing today's conditions to other days with the same exact conditions, and then checking to see how many times it rained on those days. They're not just looking at a satellite photo of a cloud formation and saying, "Yep, that looks like a 75% chance of rain from the way those clouds look..." It's proper record-keeping over a large period of time that makes predicting the weather feasible, not going on a balloon ride, I'm fairly sure about this.
The aeronauts do learn, however, that the air is much thinner and colder the further up you go - I suppose one alternate theory back then was that the air would get warmer, because you'd be getting closer to the sun. Only that's now how it works, but I guess somebody had to go there to find out. And this ties in with my Mental Health Month theme, because the lack of oxygen causes them to act in irrational ways, or at least makes it more difficult to act in rational ways, which I think is sort of the same thing. Also, I think they had to be a little crazy to go up in the balloon in the first place.
They also didn't bring enough warm clothing (perhaps because that would have weighed down the balloon?) so Redmayne's character starts to suffer from frostbite, and delivers many of his lines without moving his mouth. What is it with this actor, first he gets an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking just by sitting still in a chair for most of "The Theory of Everything", now he's speaking lines without moving his facial muscles? It all seems quite lazy to me, as a very important part of acting is moving around.
Also starring Felicity Jones (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Himesh Patel, Phoebe Fox (last seen in "Eye in the Sky"), Rebecca Front, Robert Glenister (last seen in "Live by Night"), Vincent Perez (last seen in "At Eternity's Gate"), Anne Reid (last seen in "The Snowman"), Lewin Lloyd, Tim McInnerny (last seen in "Race"), Thomas Arnold, Lisa Jackson, Elsa Alili, Connie Price.
RATING: 4 out of 10 ominous clouds
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