Welcome back, George
Clooney’s post-apocalyptic drama, set in Arctic and space, is chilling
We haven’t seen much of George Clooney lately, and we’ve missed him.
He last starred in 2016’s largely disappointing “Money Monster” and directed the following year’s similarly lackluster “Suburbicon.”
However, Clooney has had plenty of winning efforts in front of and behind the camera: “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” “Ocean’s Eleven.” “Good Night, and Good Luck.” “Up in the Air.” “Gravity.”
We could go on, but we won’t.
Belonging up in the air with those films is “The Midnight Sky,” which is directed by and stars Clooney. Already in a limited theatrical run, it lands on Netflix on Dec. 23.
The thoughtful, if sorrowful, post-apocalyptic drama — an adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 novel “Good Morning, Midnight” — pulls you in and keeps you invested in its parallel stories set on Earth and in space.
We meet Clooney’s Augustine Lofthouse, a scientist alone — or so we think — in
an Arctic Circle observatory in February 2049, three weeks after what on-screen text refers to only as “the event.”
Soon, we get a flashback of others scurrying to leave the complex via helicopters. While everyone else is desperate to get home, this place seems to be where the heavily bearded, regularly coughing Augustine feels he belongs.
Augustine is staying, we learn, to continue to try to re-establish contact with a spacecraft and its five-person crew. The ship is returning from a mission to K23, a distant planet a younger Augustine discovered and determined may be hospitable to humans.
The ship, Aether, is commanded by Tom Adelwole (David Oyelowo), with his subordinates consisting of his pregnant romantic partner, Sully (Felicity Jones); Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), Sanchez (Demian Bichir) and Maya ( Tiffany Boone).
When Augustine isn’t failing to contact the ship, grabbing a bite or giving himself a transfusion, he’s pouring himself major-league glasses of whiskey and getting absolutely soused.
A fire in the facility leads him into a room where he finds a girl, 7 or 8 years old, who apparently doesn’t speak and was seemingly left behind by someone during an evacuation.
Having gotten nowhere with the observatory’s equipment, Augustine concludes he must travel to another nearby facility with greater communication capabilities, but that will mean taking Iris into intense winter conditions for a journey by snowmobile. Nonetheless, he bundles her up, and she goes with him without objection.
Meanwhile, aboard the ship, the crew has its own problems, including the need for a few of the travelers to venture outside of the ship for repairs as the craft soars through an uncharted part of space. It’s a dangerous proposition, to say the least.
Clooney is quite good in “The Midnight Sky,” although we don’t get to see too many sides of his character. Nonetheless, he’s particularly strong in the scenes where Augustine serves as a fatherly protector of the girl.
The adaptation of “Good Morning, Midnight” by screenwriter Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) reveals a bit more about what has happened on Earth while maintaining a vague cloud over it all. Safe to say “the event” was big.
The film is keeping another secret, however, and you wonder early on if such a revelation is coming. To be fair, it’s hard to say what Clooney, as the director, could have done to better hide it.
In fact, “The Midnight Sky” is one of his best directorial efforts overall. Whether he’s taking us into the harsh, cold environment of the Arctic Circle or the colder, harsher environment that is space, we feel the tremendous dangers facing the various characters. And while it’s mostly a calm, steady affair, Clooney blasts us with a couple of well-constructed harrowing sequences.
Even in this strangest of years, the holiday season is packed with new movies to be enjoyed, but you really should carve out time to experience “The Midnight Sky.”
And, hey, George, please don’t be a stranger.