CLOONEY DAZZLES IN FRONT OF, BEHIND CAMERA
Set in the year 2049, in the immediate aftermath of an unspecified global calamity that appears, based on scant but at times scary evidence, to be both environmental and technological - perhaps even financial, political and cultural - "The Midnight Sky" only looks like a disaster film. Slyly, and by misdirection that cleverly conceals its true intent until the poignant end, it reveals itself to be a story of regret over a lost opportunity for connection.
George Clooney, who also directed Mark L. Smith's smart adaptation of Lily Brooks-dalton's 2016 novel, plays the fulcrum of the film's deft pivot: Augustine Lofthouse, an astronomer stationed at an observatory in far-northern Canada, inside the Arctic Circle. As the film opens, and Augustine's research colleagues are being evacuated by plane to their homes, he alone has decided to remain. It's not that Augustine is bound by an unreasonable sense of duty, or is simply foolhardy, as one of his co-workers suggests to the scientist.
If our protagonist, who appears to have a serious illness, were "in a hurry to die," Augustine responds, he'd be leaving with the others. Rather, it's that
Augustine, having spent his life as an explorer - albeit a vicarious, earthbound one - has nothing and nobody to go back to.
Shortly afterward, two things happen. Augustine becomes aware of a spacecraft named the Aether whose crew (played by Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bechír
and Tiffany Boone) is returning from a mission to explore a potentially habitable moon of Jupiter. Having lost their communication with Earth, they need to be warned not to come back. The second thing is the appearance of a small, apparently mute girl (Caoilinn Springall), who seems to have been left behind in the rush to evacuate. Dubbed Iris, after a drawing she makes of the flower, the child becomes Augustine's responsibility, along with the necessity of making his way to a second, stronger antenna, some distance away, after the one at the observatory proves inadequate to connect with the Aether. How these two things are related is only gradually disclosed.
As director, Clooney juggles the interconnecting stories adroitly, never giving away the tricks he's playing on the audience while spinning the yarn.
Beneath a bushy beard, often caked with frost, Clooney's Augustine manages to convey a powerful sense that something has been forfeited forever. What that is, and how "The Midnight Sky" manages to show him reaching out, however imperfectly, to restore something broken, is the message - and the magic - of this movie.