The Aeronauts: Science Fiction of the Past

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.

                                             Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time

                                                      Touching the Face of the Cosmos

Ad Astra: the 2001 of the 21st Century (So Far)

What better time to see Ad Astra than now, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, when we still have made but a pittance of progress beyond our landing on the Moon in 1969?

In the "near future" of Ad Astra, we're established on the Moon and Mars - not well established, by any means, but good enough - and the story concerns Roy McBride's (Brad Pitt) trip to Neptune to find out what happened to his father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones).  Clifford was the first man to reach Jupiter and then Saturn, but he got hung up around Neptune, and most people don't know if he's dead or alive. 

Roy thinks he's alive, and he's right, which leads to the bigger story: is it worth leaving Earth, permanently, in the quest to find some alien intelligence, that Clifford is sure must be out there? Clifford's so sure that he begs Roy to let him float away in space, to die, rather than return to Earth with Roy.   In the decisive scene, Roy lets his father go, and Roy returns to Earth.  Because, having discovered there's likely no other intelligence out there, Roy wants to return to his home.

It's not the ending I wanted, but the movie was nonetheless powerful, and the ending was emotionally satisfying.  Indeed, Ad Astra was so good a movie, so different in the combination of individual personality and grand scale, that I'd say it's the 2001 of our 21st century, at least so far.

As to what I would have rather seen at the end: that would have been Roy refusing to let his father go, bringing Clifford back to Earth, where Roy could have unpacked, savored, and assessed his father's immense knowledge gathered over thirty years at the furtherest our species has ventured from Planet Earth.  Yes, Roy speaks of great stores of knowledge in the records his father kept, but there's nothing like actually talking to the person who made and kept the records to get the deepest and fullest picture of what he (or she) learned.

Nonetheless - great acting Brad Pitt, great movie by James Gray, see it.

                                             Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time

                                                      Touching the Face of the Cosmos