The Flight of Bryan
James Erskine’s decidedly off-beat documentary looks at two human-powered flights in the 1970s.
Image courtesy of Altitude Distributors.
I have long been an admirer of the documentarian director James Erskine and not least because he has repeatedly succeeded in gaining my interest when the subject matter of his films had on paper limited interest for me. To some extent that applied to The Battle of the Sexes (2012) which featured tennis, to Pantini: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist (2014) about the professional racer Mario Pantini and to The Ice King (2018), his fine biopic of John Curry. But over and above all else there was his recent Copa 71 co-directed with Rachel Ramsay in 2023 and so well-made and so deeply human that this portrayal of the 1971 Women's Soccer World Cup held me fascinated throughout. That being so, I was hoping that Erskine in his capacity as writer/director of The Flight of Bryan would pull off the trick once again. But this time I came to the conclusion that for the film to really draw one in you needed to have a strong existing interest in its subject-matter.
The Bryan of the title is Bryan Allen, an American who was the pilot who participated in two major endeavours in the 1970s. He was part of the team assembled by another American, the late Paul MacCready, an aeronautical engineer. When MacCready found himself in debt he decided to build a craft that could compete for a special prize that had been a set up in England by an industrialist named Henry Kremer and which by then was open to competitors beyond Britain. This prize offered the sum of £50,000 to the winner who had to design a human powered craft that would take to the air and perform to the specifications laid down. Erskine’s film is in three parts and the first set in Los Angeles shows how for over more than fifty weeks of trial and error a plane relying on pedal power was created, one that would prove capable of winning the prize in 1977.
That material provides, in effect, the first half of The Flight of Bryan. The second, presented in two parts, ‘England’ and ‘The Channel’, goes on to show how the cost incurred in the earlier enterprise was so high that MacCready’s debt remained unpaid whereupon he set out to win the Kener prize for the second time since by then £100,000 was being offered for the first comparable flight that would pass over the Channel from England to France. That first flight was the subject of an Oscar-winning short by Ben Shedd made in 1978 and other archive footage relevant to Erskine’s undertaking was also available but not enough to readily fill out the full story that he wanted to tell. Consequently, although there is new interview footage here featuring Allen, Paul MacCready’s son Tyler, Sam Duran and other team members, Erskine has opted to incorporate re-enactments with actors in a very overt way. The survivors are seen talking to these actors as they prepare and it means that Bryan Allen can discuss this with Jordan Renzo who will then play him and act out how he met Sam Duran as a young man.
If this is unusual in spite of hybrid forms becoming more popular in recent documentaries (just this month we have had both The Man with a Thousand Faces and Memories of a Burning Body incorporating actors into what can be categorised as a documentary work), The Flight of Bryan is odd in other ways too. It actually begins with a written statement telling us that the movie we are about to see is based on the unreliable memory of its participants. It might seem in keeping with that that from time-to-time touches of animation are incorporated and there’s also the question of tone. Those who worked for MacCready rather than looking like professionals appear as an odd collection who, were they to have been transported to Britain, might have been taken for eccentric amateurs worthy of appearing in some classic Ealing comedy. Indeed, there is one scene when the team having arrived in England find themselves with a transport problem which involves seven men trying to get into one small car.
At times the endeavours portrayed seem positively Pythonesque in their absurdities and that might have led to a film that was nevertheless sympathetic and engaging. But, when one adds in the concept of the film within the film as represented by the acted scenes, it all seems rather overelaborate and keeps one at a distance – as does the technical detail about the various design issues that come up unless one is indeed knowledgeable about flights of this kind. If my own tendency was to regard the enterprise as rather wacky. I was put in my place by statements which, closing the film, point out that it was this which led to the first solar powered flights and also to the first production of electric cars. For that matter we are on serious ground when the publicity refers to the fact that MacCready’s team featured people who were neuro-diverse, but that is an issue that is hardly touched on in the film. It is indeed the case that Erskine’s experience enables him to build up the tension in the substantial final section showing the actual attempt to fly across the English Channel on 12th June 1979. But I am still convinced that to really take this film to your heart you have to approach it as somebody already fascinated by the kind of enterprise so beloved of Bryan Allen.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Bryan Allen, Sam Duran, Tyler MacCready, Bill Watson, Taras Kiceniuk and Blaine Rawdon as themselves and with Jordan Renzo, Theo Erskine, Steven O’Neill, Jose Palma, Josh Harvey, Frederick Ruth.
Dir James Erskine, Pro Victoria Gregory, Alex Holmes, Sean Sorensen, Philipp Manderia and Adele Reeves, Screenplay James Erskine, Ph John Halliday and Christopher Titus-King, Pro Des Jo Manser, Ed Clare Guillon, Music Cristoph Zirngibi.
New Black Films/Red Bull Studios-Altitude Distributors.
96 mins. UK. 2024. UK Rel: 22 November 2024. Cert. 15.
