The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
GEORGE CLOONEY SHINES IN ‘ MIDNIGHT SKY’
‘ The Midnight Sky’ toggles between sets of characters.
A man alone, with a quarantine beard, sits and eats a plateful of whatever he probably ate the day before.
He shuffles back t o hi s computer screens, monitoring red- zone hot spots. He wonders if his old life is gone for good. He’s longing for human contact. He wonders where it all went wrong. And he’s f at ally i l l , as we learn in the opening minutes of “The Midnight Sky,” director and star George Clooney’s grandly executed Netflix film streaming Dec. 23.
Just what I need. Some peppy escapism, you may be thinking. But this post- apocalyptic drama, taking place three weeks after an unspecified “event” has decimated the planet, soon shifts gears and eases into a warmer, reassuring realm of science fiction, in between regular bouts of suspenseful calamity.
Hal f o f “The Midni g ht Sky’s” story ( the time is 2049) unfolds among a small group of astronauts and explorers returning home from one of Jupiter’s potentially habit able moons. The valiant group of women and men are just trying to get home in one piece, while dealing with flying space debris.
Clooney plays the terminally ill Augustine, renowned astronomer and the last one ( by choice) to remain at an Arctic Circle research facility. He dreams of his younger self ( played by Ethan Peck, voiced by Clooney), his workaholic tendencies, a squandered love affair.
In the Arctic research station one day, Augustine’s unblinking, wide- eyed gaze is startled by a young girl, thought to have been evacuated along with the others, hiding out in the kitchen. These improbable companions make a dangerous, windblasted trek to a neighboring research facility by snowmobile, braving stray wolves and melting ice caps.
In between cliffhangers, Augustine i ssues di st ress calls, picked up eventually by astronauts returning from Jupiter’s previously undiscovered moon. On board the spacecraft, Sully ( Felicity Jones), who is pregnant, can’t fathom why communications with NASA have gone silent. “The Midnight Sky” toggles between these t wo sets of characters, on Earth and out there, gradually winding them around the same narrative pole.
Cinematographer Martin Ruhe, who shot “Control” and worked on Clooney’s Hulu “Catch- 22” adaptation, isolates Augustine in his forbidding environment, f requently deploying t he classiest possible update to the iphone portrait setting, blurring everything around the focal point.
It’s a canny tactic, paving the way for convincing depictions of outdoor snow blindness. In space, the images are crisp and inviting, even when the space explorers enter virtual- reality memories of their families far, far away.
This i s easily Clooney’s finest hour behind the camera since “Good Night, and Good Luck” 15 years ago. And it’s one of his finest performances.