Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a 2019 adventure film inspired by true story,
titled The Aeronauts. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
High in the air, a man and woman struggle against the wind in a balloon. Since throwing away all the
weight doesn't work, the man jumps off to save his beloved. This is a memory that has come back to
Amelia Wren, an aeronaut feeling nervous about her first balloon flight after over two years.
Her sister, Antonia, thinks she shouldn't fly if she doesn't feel well, but Amelia
is stubborn and explains she just needs a moment. It's 1862 and most Londoners have come to see the
balloon take off. James Glaisher, the scientist that will be joining this expedition, isn't too
worried about the dark clouds in the sky, but his friend and fellow scientist John Trew is.
James insists he's made the proper calculations and it would be fine, and his argument is backed
up by the man that has invested his money on this flight and wants to see it happen.
So no matter how much John worries, the balloon is taking off today. Amelia arrives late but
she makes quite a show out of it, knowing that tickets sale are what keeps their flights funded.
She arrives in a very colorful, circus-like dress while riding the roof of her coach car,
then jumps around the balloon platform making jokes and trying to get a very awkward James to
play along. She even brings a dog that will fly with them, ignoring James' protests. After giving
a speech about adventure and promising to break the French's record of twenty-three thousand feet,
Amelia finally frees the balloon without giving James time to finish taking notes and
measurements. As soon as they are a few feet above the platform, she climbs to the balloon hoop and
drops the dog, who has been carrying a parachute all along and makes a safe landing as part of
the show. As they fly above London and admire the breath-taking view, James takes out his binoculars
and watches the building of the British Society, remembering how all this started. Two years
earlier, he and John climbed to a roof to watch a different balloon successfully take off. Later,
James asked the British Society for funding so he can go on a similar expedition, but he's turned
down: everyone mocks him for believing the weather can be predicted as if they were fortune-tellers.
The insults even reach the ears of James' parents, who are as hurt by this as he is.
Back in the present, Amelia changes her show dress for warmer clothes while James sends out
his first pigeon with his readings. As the balloon goes higher, they enter a cloudy area, and just
like John, Amelia worries about the possibility of a storm. James insists his predictions don't
include a storm, but the weather soon proves him wrong: lightning begins appearing around them and
a very strong wind starts blowing, shaking the balloon along. James falls on the bottom of the
basket and hits his head, causing it to bleed, but Amelia refuses to land the balloon since
she knows how to get out of the storm: they just need to fly higher, making it above the clouds.
The wind suddenly gives the balloon a particularly hard shake, causing James and Amelia to be pushed
out of the basket. They manage to hold onto the hoop before the wind hits them again and
James falls inside the basket, but Amelia is left hanging onto one of the ropes. Helping her climb
back proves to be a problem when James isn't very strong and the wind continues to go against them,
so he solves this little issue by tying himself up to the basket before offering Amelia her hand
and finally bringing her back inside. As soon as she is in, she begins throwing sandbags out,
helping the balloon to go higher and leave the clouds behind. This high up, everything
is absolute silence, and they're touched by the gentle sunlight. While they're rearranging the
ropes to help the balloon hold better, they get to see an aureole, a beautiful sight James never saw
before outside of books. The pair has some fun screaming into the nothingness, but suddenly,
they can hear some city noises conducted by the humid conditions. Excited by this discovery,
James begins taking notes, but Amelia can't help having once again a flashback to her last flight,
during which her husband Pierre Rennes died. After losing her husband, Amelia wouldn't leave the
house - she drank a lot and wouldn't take a bath. This kept going for two years. Some weeks ago,
Antonia got tired of seeing her like this and dragged her back into the real world, taking her
to a party the family had been invited to. It was clear that Amelia wasn't having a good time there,
especially since all men were too intimidated by her to approach her - all except one. James
made some chitchat with her before revealing the real reason for his talk: he needed her to accept
his idea for an exploration of the sky to prove weather prediction was possible. Amelia quickly
noticed that James had sneaked into that party and wasn't really invited, so while she usually
wouldn't have cared about someone's social status, she didn't like the fact he had lied to her.
But James gave her a heartwarming speech about how much such discoveries could help humanity,
so Amelia gave in and accepted to work with him. Later, when Antonia heard about this news,
she called Amelia out for it, saying that she was running away from her problems and the happiness
she found in the air had come from her husband, not the balloon. Back in the present, Amelia is
recovering from her panic attack and hears James ask her about her husband, but she refuses to talk
about him. While she takes care of his head injury, they're suddenly met by a wonderful
surprise: a kaleidoscope of butterflies flying around them. James is particularly amazed by this
because he never thought butterflies could fly this high even when John, who had studied them,
was sure they could. This proves his friend's theory. Touched by the gorgeous moment, Amelia
tells James about Pierre's love for the beauty of the world, and with tears in her eyes, thanks him
for not pushing her to talk about it. Once again, Amelia begins thinking about the circumstances
that brought them here. After hearing her sister's worries, she changed her mind about the trip.
So she entered the British Society building, ignoring the fact women weren't allowed inside,
to tell James the expedition was canceled and that she would never fly on a balloon again.
Later in the evening, James went to visit his parents, giving his mom the news but keeping
them from his father not to hurt him because he was already suffering from memory loss. At
least he still remembered how to use the telescope James got him, and the incoming trip as well, so
he gifted his son a pair of binoculars for him to use once he reached the sky. Back to the balloon,
which is starting to get covered with frost, James is allowing Amelia to help him take notes.
The numbers this time are exciting: little by little they see them go higher and celebrate
when they see them finally surpass the record the French had achieved - they are now officially the
people who had flown the highest in the history of humanity. After shaking hands and thanking
each other for the opportunity, James sends out another pigeon with his findings and Amelia
asks him to put on some warmer clothes. However, James hasn't brought any to keep the weight light,
causing Amelia to want to land the balloon to avoid her friend freezing to death. James doesn't
allow her to do so, giving her a speech about the importance of what they're doing and showing her
how beautiful the starry sky is. Amelia remembers she does indeed find happiness in flying,
not just her husband, so she accepts under the condition that she gets to decide when
it becomes too much to keep going. James agrees so she throws out another bag of sand. A new
memory begins of the night Amelia changed her mind about the trip. She was visited by John,
who came by his own choice and not because James sent him to tell her the trip was worth the risk.
He showed her James' research notes where he had drawn some beautiful snowflakes,
and admitted that sometimes James was indeed wrong - he said it would snow tonight when it wasn't.
However, he also came across remarkable truths, and John thought it was Amelia's responsibility
to advance the cause of science. After he left, Amelia went to visit Pierre's grave
to think about it, and reached her decision when James' predictions came true and it began to snow.
Back in the present, the entire balloon and even the people themselves are covered with frost.
James sends out a pigeon, but it falls as soon as it tries to fly, and his last one
is dead. Now nobody will know their location if something happens, so James begins freaking out.
Amelia has to stop him from throwing out a bunch of their things as she points out his attitude
and his now bleeding nose are signs of hypoxia - the lack of oxygen is affecting his brain.
She wants to descend, but James wants to risk his life for science like Pierre did,
so Amelia slaps him for it. The real story of what happened isn't heroic: Amelia had
pushed the balloon too hard and the seams ripped apart. No matter how many things they threw out,
they couldn't make the balloon descend, so Pierre jumped off in order to save Amelia. After hearing
such a story, James apologizes for his attitude and accepts it's time to go down. Amelia pulls
a rope to open the gas valve but nothing happens because of the frost, so after reminding James to
stay awake not to let the hypoxia win, she begins climbing to the top to open the valve manually.
This proves to be a difficult task because frostbite is starting to set in her fingers, but
she pushes herself to keep going until she slips and is left hanging upside down from the rope.
Thinking back about her husband's death, Amelia decides she can't let his sacrifice go in vain,
so she puts herself together and begins climbing again, this time with a rope tied to her waist in
case she slips again. James has fallen unconscious by the time Amelia makes it to the top.
She tries to push the valve with her elbow, but it's stuck, so she must risk standing up
and kicking it. This does work, but to keep it open she has to take off her boot and put it
between the valve and the balloon. Right after achieving this, she falls unconscious as well,
only to wake up minutes later when the balloon begins descending and she slips off the edge.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Amelia's family and the British Society are worried because they haven't
seen the balloon fly back yet and the estimated time of arrival has already passed. They try to
stay optimistic though, because usually hearing about them means you are hearing about a disaster,
so they should see silence as a positive thing and just wait. At the balloon, Amelia finds herself
hanging on the rope she had tied to her waist, proving to have been a lifesaver. She makes it
swing a couple of times to be able to reach the basket, and once she's back inside, she tries
to wake James up. At first there's no response and Amelia thinks she may've lost him, but thankfully,
after lots of shaking, he eventually reacts to her call. He takes their final readings before
taking care of her frostbitten hands, only pausing when it starts snowing to catch some snowflake
for later analysis. Afterward, they sit while waiting for the balloon to finish descending,
and Amelia says she's reached a conclusion to his sister's question of why she wanted to fly again:
she wants everything she's lost to have meant something. In return, James mentions some of the
discoveries he's made, but most importantly, the fact he's seen beauty that can't match
the illustrations on books and the fact they've brought stars closer, which Amelia agrees with.
Suddenly, Amelia notices that the snow isn't falling, it's hovering,
which means they're traveling at the same speed as it. This can only be explained by one thing:
the balloon is collapsing. After removing the valve and therefore her shoe, they begin throwing
stuff out of the basket to lose weight, including the jackets they're wearing and James' tools after
he tears off his notes from the notebook. This still isn't enough, and for a moment they think
they have no hope, but James gets an idea: both of them climb onto the balloon hoop, then he cuts the
ropes to let the basket go as well. The balloon is now descending at a very dangerous speed,
and Amelia considers making the same sacrifice her husband made, but James stops her just in time.
He has a new idea: they cut the cords that keep the balloon in shape and the silk gets pulled up,
transforming the balloon into a parachute. It begins descending more gently now,
but it's still quite a trip for them: the balloon goes through some trees and makes James fall,
then it drags Amelia through the ground until it finally comes to a stop. She falls unconscious for
a few minutes, and when she wakes up, she rushes to find James, meeting him halfway
because he had been looking for her too. Together they help each other stand up and return home.
It's estimated that they've reached a height of thirty-seven thousand feet that day, seven miles
high. Their success makes it to the news and is seen by James' parents, who are proud of his son.
His findings prove the existence of layers in the atmosphere, a discovery that leads
the way to the first weather forecasts and has earned James the respect of his peers.
After spending some time with her sister and nieces because she mustn't forget to live,
Amelia and James build a new balloon to go flying again and continue their research.