As long as I'm reviewing good 2019 science fiction movies about traveling off of this planet - I reviewed Ad Astra here yesterday - I might as well throw in a review of The Aeronauts before the year runs out,
Part of the story is true history. James Glaisher was a meteorologist and an "aeronaut" who traveled further off the Earth - around 9500 meters - than anyone before him, in 1862, in a balloon that lifted him. But in real history, his co-pilot was Henry Tracey Coxwell, not even mentioned in the movie, which had as Glaisher's pilot the fictitious Amelia Rennes.
That's what makes the movie science fiction. But there's nothing fictitious about the real emotions Felicity Jones shows us as Amelia, working through her demons born of the loss and trauma she experienced from an earlier trip to the sky. Indeed, in her partnership in explorations above the clouds she shares with Glaisher, she is the strong one, both psychologically and even physically in some breathtaking scenes. In real history, Coxwell saved the day after Glaisher passed out in the high altitude, but I have no idea if those two had conversations as meaningful as between Amelia Rennes and Glaisher in the movie.
The fiction in this scientific history of a movie calls for, once again, the important proviso that should accompany all docu-dramas: they're not the same as documentaries, which are themselves not the same as real history, since a documentary only tells us the part of the story that the filmmaker wants us to see. But docu-dramas go one big fictional step further - they make up conversations, what real-life people do, and sometimes even make up characters from whole cloth.
That's what The Aeronauts serves us, though Amelia is said to be a composite of real women who flew in balloons in those days. As far as I'm concerned, I don't care what parts are real and what parts of the composite are fictional. The Aernonauts is an uplifting, inspiring movie, and I highly recommend it.
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