The biggest complaint with a movie like ‘The Midnight Sky’? Bad timing….but, I suppose, that’s what you get when the subject matter involves the end of the world. You get over the doomsday speed bump, this is actually quite a fascinating film.
Not a huge adrenaline rush, though. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that, as George Clooney’s Netflix original feature demands patience. Doubling as star and director, Clooney’s pace in unraveling ‘The Midnight Sky’ is, if nothing else, consistent; and by that, I mean consistently unhurried. It’ll likely hook you, and hook you early…just make sure that your chair of choice is comfortable in watching it, for you won’t burn many calories at this speed.
Adapted from the novel ‘Good Morning, Midnight’, ‘The Midnight Sky’ begins in the year 2049, and the evacuation of a polar observatory. All residents of the snowbound outpost are being choppered out due to ‘The Event’, a cataclysmic disaster that we can only assume was environmental – the story never does go into detail on exactly why the world is falling apart, it just is. We’re also led to believe that few have survived, Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney) being one of them. Alone at the observatory with enough food and fuel to last only a few months, he’s tasked with contacting a manned spacecraft returning from one of Jupiter’s moons, identified as very likely to sustain human life. Lofthouse is not only in a race to somehow warn the interstellar travelers (a crew including Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir and Tiffany Boone) not to return home and go back to the place in which they have a chance to survive, but his OWN clock is ticking, as he’s battling terminal cancer.
In a slight twist, it turns out that Augustine is not alone. Iris (Caoillin Springall) appears, accidentally left behind during the evacuation, paving the way for Lofthouse to transition from grumpy loner to protective father figure…a maneuver that effectively shows off just HOW much thespian game Clooney has. The guy’s good.
While a small portion of ‘The Midnight Sky’ bounces between the arctic home front and outer space, the majority of the film is really two separate tales with little intercutting between them. It’s an interesting choice – maybe not the smartest one, but definitely bold. Probably the least in-your-face thriller I’ve experienced in a long time, there’s a quiet brilliance to ‘The Midnight Sky’ that’s hard to resist.
- Image courtesy of Netflix
