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THE MIDNIGHT SKY
Director: George Clooney Cast: George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler, Caoilinn Springall, Ethan Peck, Sophie Rundle MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:02 Release Date: 12/11/20 (limited); 12/23/20 (Netflix) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 10, 2020 The world has ended, and as far as Augustine (George Clooney) knows, he is the last human being alive on the planet. That's the setup of The Midnight Sky, a movie wrapped up in so many intentional mysteries and so caught up in making sure things happen that it mostly evades the real mystery of this premise: What can a person do when he or she knows that nothing else will happen, because the end, as they say, is nigh? Adapting Lily Brooks-Dalton's novel Good Morning, Midnight, screenwriter Mark L. Smith and Clooney, who also directed, see this material mostly as fodder for adventure—two adventures, in fact. Clooney's character, a renowned scientist who has spent his life searching for worlds beyond our own that might sustain life, may be alone—or at least he thinks so—on Earth, but there are other humans in the universe. He and those unaware travelers are in for a lot of trouble, obstacles, and complications, because, well, it's not as if anything else is going on anywhere at the moment. Somewhere in the Arctic Circle in the year 2049, Augustine has decided to remain behind at an observatory, while everyone else has evacuated for home or temporary shelter underground. A catastrophe of unknown origin has struck the planet. We only learn it started with "a mistake," and we only know that clouds of radiation are spreading around the globe. The poison will eventually reach Augustine in the frozen region, but that might not matter. He's also ill and dying from an undisclosed disease, which requires him to give himself regular blood transfusions. In the bigger picture, he won't be dying alone, but on a more personal level, he definitely will. In the movie's early scenes, Clooney establishes a foreboding sense of isolation and despair amidst the empty spaces of the observatory, and his performance, which is admirably and appropriately stoic, finishes the job. There are brief flashbacks to Augustine's past as a younger man (played by Ethan Peck) more in love with the mysteries of the universe than with the reality of a young woman (played by Sophie Rundle) who reveres and adores him. Those scenes aren't particularly necessary for the mood of the story, but they do get us thinking that there must be some necessity for them in order for the plot to work. In that regard, those scenes are necessary, but the payoff certainly doesn't work within the larger scheme of what the filmmakers are doing here. That side story is one of loss and regret, and if the whole of the movie were about that, the final revelation here could have succeeded. Instead, though, we get Augustine discovering a young and silent girl named Iris (Caoilinn Springall), who has been hiding in the observatory, and another story about the crew of a spaceship, currently returning to a ruined Earth from one of the scientist's discovered planets. Augustine has to travel north with the girl, in order to inform the crew about what has happened, and the unaware crew goes through the regular routines, trying and failing to contact Earth. This is, more or less, a pair of adventure stories—one in which the scientist must brave the elements on his mission and the other in which the ship's crew must travel to an unmapped part of space, where they inevitably encounter plenty of cosmic perils. The scenes on Earth, grounded by a sense of loneliness and desperation and doom, are fairly compelling, thanks to how grounded Clooney's on-screen work is and how well he stages the action. The scenes aboard the spaceship (which, on a side note, is smartly designed and effectively realized via visual effects) are far less so. Clooney and Smith seem to be counting on the dramatic irony of our awareness of Earth's ruination for generating tension, but with that ignorance, the characters waste a lot of time playing games, before having a quite odd sing-along under less-than-appropriate circumstances. There's simply little reason to care about expectant parents Sully (Felicity Jones) and Tom (David Oyelowo), homesick pilot Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), or Sanchez (Demián Bichir) and Maya (Tiffany Boone), who are both left so undeveloped as characters that we anticipate at least one of them will prove how dangerous space travel can be (Admittedly, the sequence proving that theory is suspenseful, while the payoff is an unexpectedly gruesome shock). Clooney sets up an intentionally distancing effect with this story, by way of how little information about the worldwide disaster we receive, the flashbacks, a dream or two, and the blissful obliviousness of the ship's crew. That emptiness needs to be filled with something. There's so much potential for the philosophical ramifications of facing the end of life on levels both widespread and intimate, and the final scenes certainly attempt to tap into some emotional truth about Augustine. The ambitions of The Midnight Sky, though, are far more familiar and too comfortable. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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