The Midnight Sky
Directed by: George Clooney
Written by: Mark L. Smith - Based on the book by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Starring: George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Caoilinn Springall, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Tiffany Boone, Sophie Rundle, Ethan Peck
Drama/Fantasy/Sci-Fi - 122 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Dec 2020
Written by: Mark L. Smith - Based on the book by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Starring: George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Caoilinn Springall, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Tiffany Boone, Sophie Rundle, Ethan Peck
Drama/Fantasy/Sci-Fi - 122 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Dec 2020
We did something. In the year 2049 (not that far away when you think about it), humans finally pushed or manipulated the climate past a particular tipping point we cannot recover from. Noted tequila magnate and Nespresso hawker, also the director of The Midnight Sky, George Clooney, does not tell us what, why, or how we created “The Event”. All the audience knows at the kick-off is humans are in trouble. The scientists in the Arctic are evacuating their laboratories heading home to contend with Earth’s poisoned air with their loved ones, but one man will stay behind on a personal quest with shrouded motivations. Part Earth-bound apocalypse adventure and space-based thriller, The Midnight Sky is epic in scale but does not rank among the most profound films wrestling with “what have we done” consequences or “where might humans go from here” fantasies.
Augustine (Clooney, The Ides of March) is alone. He’s alone far north of the Arctic circle racing against time to try and contact a spaceship returning to Earth. The spaceship was on a previously unknown moon of Jupiter considered hospitable to sustain human life. Unfortunately, time appears to have run out for those on Earth to reach the moon due to catastrophic environmental degradation. Unknown to the crew of the spaceship Aether, time is not on their side either. They are returning to a doomed planet where their only hope of survival is to turn the ship around and head back to the fledgling moon outpost - but their communications are down and they’ve heard nothing from Earth for weeks.
Augustine (Clooney, The Ides of March) is alone. He’s alone far north of the Arctic circle racing against time to try and contact a spaceship returning to Earth. The spaceship was on a previously unknown moon of Jupiter considered hospitable to sustain human life. Unfortunately, time appears to have run out for those on Earth to reach the moon due to catastrophic environmental degradation. Unknown to the crew of the spaceship Aether, time is not on their side either. They are returning to a doomed planet where their only hope of survival is to turn the ship around and head back to the fledgling moon outpost - but their communications are down and they’ve heard nothing from Earth for weeks.
The communications officer, Sully (Felicity Jones, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), relentlessly twists knobs and tests frequencies in order to reach somebody, anybody, back home. Commander Adewole (Daniel Oyelowo, Selma) is a capable leader, respects his ship and his crew, and is about to wrestle with some dicey decisions as events unfold making the Aether’s journey home anything but routine. Clooney is no stranger to disaster film’s set in space, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity being the most obvious inspiration here, and the leading man/director looks to have used his earlier experiences for inspiration. A spacewalk to repair some outside damage feels like the direct descendant of Cuarón’s groundbreaking work of cinematic space turmoil.
Meanwhile, drowning in regret and perhaps futile attempts at some sort of redemption, Augustine discovers he is not as alone as he believed. Little Iris (Caoilinn Springall) is a seven or eight-year old left behind stowaway of sorts at the Arctic station. This is a boon for the audience because Augustine, behind his bushy David Letterman beard, explains their precarious situation to her in bits and pieces and the importance of his mission to contact the Aether - to give humanity a chance now that there are no chances left on Earth. However, to get his message across, he needs a more powerful antenna, one located even farther North and a challenge to reach even in the best of times. Augustine and Iris must trek across ice and snow as deadly as encountering asteroids in space, a situation the Aether is about to confront.
Look past the whiz bangs and action on the ice and in space and The Midnight Sky, adapted from the novel “Good Morning, Midnight” by Lily Brooks-Dalton, is about man’s inability to communicate, both overtly limited by technology and emotionally as one man comes to terms with previous sins and his failure to pay attention to what are considered the more important things in life. Through Augustine, we're coming to terms with what we've done. The Midnight Sky’s themes emerge at a peculiar time in our own current circumstances considering many of us are not able to be home with our loved ones and resort to Zoom chats and elbow bumps to connect. Clooney remains a formidable filmmaker and the story he tells is intriguing, but not as intriguing as one half set in the Arctic and half in space should be. Something so exotic should not feel as by the numbers as it does. You won’t need Clooney’s tequila to help you through, but a nip of his Nespresso may help it go down easier.
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