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George Clooney has developed a reputation in Hollywood that has allowed him to work on projects that interest him even though they may not seem like the type of films Hollywood thinks the general public will want to see (see the excellent Good Night and Good Luck as an example). Clooney returns to the director’s chair with the new Netflix (and limited theatrical release for awards consideration) sci-fi film The Midnight Sky.
The film opens, as the on screen text tells us, ‘three weeks after the event’ in 2049. A group of people are attempting to evacuate a military/scientific research base in the Arctic. One woman is frantically searching for her daughter, and is told that she was put on a different helicopter that already left but she will meet her mother at the rendezvous point. The only person staying behind is scientist Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), a man who we see in flashbacks (played by Ethan Peck) who searches for planets that may be able to support human life. He’s found such a planet, a newly discovered moon orbiting Jupiter, and thirty years later a crew is dispatched to see if the planet is indeed habitable.
But after ‘the event’ (never explicitly explained by appears to be a nuclear holocaust that has destroyed the planet with radiation creeping closer to the base where Augustine is holed up), the last man on Earth — who is also battling cancer — decides to see if there are any space missions still active. He finds the one sent to explore his planet, now returning home and unaware of what’s happened on Earth. But the signal from his radio is too week to reach the Aether and its crew so he must make his way to a weathr station that is positioned better to send a signal to the ship. But things are complicated when a young girl turns up at his station, presumably the one the mother was searching for at the beginning of the movie. And she seems to be unable to speak, but she draws a picture to let him know her name is Iris. Augustine does not want to be saddled with caring for a child, especially in his condition, but the two form a father-daughter bond and make their way to the weather station, facing incredible odds from severe weather, wild animals and more.
On the Aether, the crew believes something is wrong with their communications equipment because they seemingly can’t send or receive a signal. Of the five person crew two of them, Sully (Felicity Jones) and Adewole (David Oyelowo), are in a relationship and expecting a child. Sanchez (Demian Bichir) and Maya (Tiffany Boone) have their own father-daughter thing going (we learn why later in the story), and Mitchell (Kyle Chandler) has a wife a kids waiting for him to come home. Their routine on the ship is fairly mundane until something causes them to drift off course (did the creators of HBO’s Avenue 5 read Good Morning, Midnight, the book upon which the film is based?), forcing them to follow a new course through an uncharted area of space. Inevitably, there are incidents that damage the ship and lead to a tragedy, but they still manage to get Augustine’s signal and learn that there’s nothing for them to return to. So, what does every do next?
The Midnight Sky moves slowly over the course of however many days (or weeks) is covered by the story, splitting its time between the events unfolding on Earth and in space. In the Earth scenes, it’s Clooney’s show all the way even though there are two characters. Since Iris doesn’t speak, Clooney has to do all the heavy lifting, but it’s nice to see his character evolve from the old curmudgeon who doesn’t want to take care of the child to a man willing to almost die to keep her safe. Newcomer Caoilinn Springall does manage to give a nice, silent performance, using her face to convey everything going on inside her head. The pair really make you care about this bond they’ve developed, but there is a twist that wasn’t totally unexpected.
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On the Aether, Felicity Jones is the star and her character’s pregnancy also makes us more concerned for her well-being, especially when she, Adewole and Maya have to perform a spacewalk to repair the radar and communications after a meteor storm. But the story is structured in such a way that we get just enough information about the characters to care about them all, and the performances from the cast also helps.
The only negative here is that this whole space situation is nothing new in the world of sci-fi cinema. You know at some point there will be an accident or event that puts the crew in danger. We’ve seen this all before in sci-fi films set in space — 1972’s Solaris (the 2002 remake in which Clooney also starred), Gravity, Silent Running, Sunshine, Passengers, Ad Astra among them — so you just have that feeling that you’ve seen this all before. The film is based on a novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, but perhaps Clooney could have adapted the story to make it more of his own take on Cast Away, focusing just on Augustine and maybe only hearing from the Aether instead of splitting the story between the two locations. The movie isn’t completely uninteresting. It does hold your interest as you expect things to happen but it doesn’t deliver anything new and the twists are pretty obvious.
The film looks great, production design and special effects are top notch, Clooney’s directed the film with confidence, and the cast all give wonderful performances. It’s just that by the end, the story is instantly forgettable and reminds you of those other, more impactful, films that have come before. If you have two hours to kill, it’s not the worst way to use that time but you may begin to find it a bit tedious as the clock ticks away.
The Midnight Sky has a run time of 1 hours 58 minute and is rated PG-13 for some bloody images and brief strong language.
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