Review by Brad Balfour
The Midnight Sky
Director: George Clooney
Cast: Felicity Jones, George Clooney, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler, Caoilinn Springall, Sophie Rundle
Available on Netflix, December 23rd
Thanks to the advent of all these vaccines, we’ve dodged the apocalyptic bullet. Yet it can feel like the end of days is at hand while sitting in isolation, being cut off from the world in the spaceship of one’s own apartment. Sometimes when looking through Instagram, I really resent seeing people cavorting at a Christmas party or being bikini clad on the beach absorbing solar rays in glorious warmth as if nothing has happened in this last year. But those concerns are thoughts for another essay.
With our bright, vaccine-charged future at hand, there’s a way out of this locked-down, covid-infused pandemic. We can see a glimmer beyond all this.
In contrast, gloom clings to world of The Midnight Sky like an unremovable gauze. Its unrelenting message, stated and unstated, is that the end is at hand and there’s not much that can be done.
A planet-destroying event has occurred and the Earth is inexorably being poisoned by irradiated clouds. At one of the last functioning polar outposts on Earth’s surface, the surviving humans evacuate to an underground location where they can be warehoused as they seek to escape.
Ragged, bearded Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney) stays behind. The brilliant scientist had worked for years to find habitable planets where humanity could expand. Though it’s unclear whether he had started his work because he knew the planet was ecologically doomed, he’s been studying the universe for years.
In a flashback, he returns to one night after he had given a presentation at a gala where he meets Jean Sullivan (Sophie Rundle). The two have a romantic liaison, but his obsession with work and an inability to form emotional bonds with other humans dooms the relationship. Several years later, when Augustine encounters her again, he discovers that they have a daughter, but he chooses not to approach her.
It’s 30 years later, in 2049, when this cataclysmic event has wiped out most of the Earth. Lofthouse is working at an Arctic station, refusing to evacuate, knowing he’s not going to last long since he’s dying of an illness requiring blood infusions. Alone, he tries contacting various space missions out there, hoping to warn them about the dire state of the Earth. He finds that all but one have been decommissioned.
Initially, director Clooney’s ambles through the delivery of these plot points; that made the grimness both diffuse and vaguely dreary. As the film shifts gear, ratcheting up the action, the characters’ emotional lives takes shape in both subtle and gut-busting ways.
The shift from earth’s dire state to the contrasting idyll of astronaut Sully (Felicity Jones)on K-23 — a habitable moon of Jupiter first discovered by Augustine — provides a study in contrasts and adds emotional depth to the narrative. Starship Æther’s crew is unaware of what’s happening on Earth; Augustine reaches out to them, but the antenna is too weak for him to connect with the ship as it heads back to Earth.
In the midst of this, a young girl (Caoilinn Springall) who doesn’t speak appears in the station — she might be the missing kid who was mentioned earlier when the evacuation was happening. Augustine tries to contact his colleagues but they’re all gone. But thanks to her drawing, he realizes that she’s named Iris.
Augustine decides they must head to the weather station further north to use its more powerful array. He reaches Æther’s crew, and starts to warn them when the transmission is interrupted by a meteor strike that damages the on-board radar and communication systems.
Pregnant Sully and her partner, Commander Adewole (David Oyelowo), make a spacewalk with flight engineer Maya (Tiffany Boone) to fix the ship. They succeed, but a second meteor storm riddles Maya who dies moments after she’s pulled into the ship. A broken Sully reaches out to Augustine, who tells her not to return but to slingshot back to K-23 and start a new life there.
With communications restored, Æther’s pilot, Tom Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), hears his wife’s final words, and on seeing Earth’s scorched surface, decides to use one of the space shuttles to go back and find his family. He’s accompanied by Sanchez (Demián Bichir), who wants to bury Maya’s body on Earth.
In their final exchange, Sully tells Augustine he was one reason why she joined NASA. She thanks him, and mentions that her mother Jean knew him, saying that her full name is Iris Sullivan. Augustine realizes that Sully is his daughter and that the young Iris is a hallucination he created to motivate him.
Before succumbing to his illness, Augustine tells Sully he’s proud to have met her and asks her to describe K-23 to him as she and Adewole set off to the planet where humanity might get a second chance.
This movie makes the weight of 2020 feel lighter in contrast. The implication is clear: we have to bear responsibility for what’s happening to us, but we’re still lucky; there’s a glimmer of hope now as we welcome in the new year.