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George Clooney's 'Midnight Sky' is a slow-burn that will hit you where it should
"The Midnight Sky" opens in the future — February 2049 to be more accurate — a few weeks after a mysterious global catastrophe has taken place. For all intents and purposes, you'll take it as the world ending; Everywhere people were being evacuated, with international space stations even in Russia and India no longer functioning.
A lonely scientist in the arctic, Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney), has asked not to be evacuated. He wanted to stay behind, to try and convince a group of astronauts on their way home back home after a two-year voyage to one of Jupiter's moons, to stay in space.
He wanted to warn them about earth. He wanted them to not come home.
Because you know what happened in the movie could happen in real life, "The Midnight Sky," which is adapted from the novel “Good Morning, Midnight” by Lily Brooks-Dalton, is terrifying. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that it might actually already be happening. The pandemic is still raging on; we are already living through the effects of the climate emergency; there is panic, there is stress, there is anxiety.
And we see Augustine, lonely and isolated, and immediately we are reminded of ourselves, quarantined since March, desperately trying to connect and communicate with what's out there.
George Clooney not only headlines the movie, he's also directed it. Speaking to members of Philippine and Singaporean press earlier in December, you can tell he's proud of his work.
"First I read the script and wanted to play the part they offered me. Then I called Netflix about the movie and what I thought it should be," he said excitedly.
"It's not an action film. It's more of a meditation — on life, on what we're capable of doing to one another if we're not careful. I wanted to tell that story and luckily, Netflix said ok. They gave me the opportunity to shoot this film and make it the way I wanted to make it."
Perhaps calling it a meditation is a bit far off — you could easily leave the slow movie feeling very uneasy. Recognizing the familiarity and possibility of such a future, you begin to worry about a myriad of things: How can we avoid such global catastrophe? If we're unwittingly in the middle of it, how can we stop it from pressing further? Could there be another planet out there that could sustain life? All open-ended questions.
"It should be a warning shot," Clooney tells GMA News Online. "It's a warning shot about what we're capable of doing to one another if we don't pay attention, about denying science or creating divisiveness or hatred.
"But it should also be hopeful," he continued. "This one experiment of humankind, it's worth it. It's worth the effort. That's what we try to say in the film. It's worth fighting as hard as they [do to live] because — we're looking at a pandemic right now and it's causing a lot of panic, heartbreak, angst. It's scaring people. But we have to remember that everything we're facing is manmade, and that means, man can unmake it and that's hopeful for me."
In the movie, there are plenty of action sequence that will leave you on the edge of your seats such as the space walk that's goes awry, the entire stretch of Augustine and the little girl Iris traversing through the arctic.
But it's peppered with joyous moments, too (look for the scene with the peas and watch for "Sweet Caroline") and poetic, graceful sequences (like when Augustine identifies Polaris) far outweigh them.
Coupled with the beautiful scoring, and — ok fine. The movie can mimic the peace that comes with meditations.
It's a beautiful and quiet movie, one that you can either (a) enjoy because tbh, you've had it up to here with the frantic pacing and loud everything or (b) not know what to make of. If you even finish it at all. It's a slow movie, one that tends to lean toward boring.
It's hardly the feel-good Holiday movie that everybody is raring for, especially after such a tumultuous year. But it is befitting this particular time of year, when we turn pensive and reflect on the year that was.
Especially after such a tough year, we need to reassess ourselves before forging ahead. And "The Midnight Sky" is more than ready to trigger that reflection.
— LA, GMA News
