THE MIDNIGHT SKY (2020)
George Clooney as Augustine. Cr. Philippe Antonello/NETFLIX ©2020
2020 has quite possibly been the most interesting movie year on record in quite some time. With the usual superhero movies and IP extensions shuttled to dates unknown, we have been left in an alternate timeline where the only films people talked about* were smaller, mid-budget films geared, at least nominally, to either adults or actual children: comedies, dramas, cartoons, horror films, documentaries. It’s as if we were quantum-lept into a timeline where Star Wars and Jaws never happened, and while I’m not going to pretend I didn’t wish I could sit down on a hot summer day with a tub of Capitol popcorn for Black Widow, I was thrilled to witness a slate the likes of which has never been released in my lifetime. Not every critic might write a year-end rundown of the films of 2020, but mark my words: someday, there will be books written about the year’s releases.
Strictly speaking, The Midnight Sky doesn’t fit this pattern: it’s a genuine, big-budget sci-fi blockbuster, with big expensive stars and big expensive special effects, which was shot late last year and was always going to launch this December, pandemic or no (Netflix, of course, being the one major studio unscrambled by a lack of open theaters). But, remarkably, it still manages to feel of a piece with the films of 2020. This may be a galaxy-spanning space adventure set in the year 2049, but it’s also a film about human characters dealing with emotions and entirely plausible problems. I didn’t love it, but as one of the few true blockbusters of 2020, damned if it doesn’t feel appropriate.
In the grand tradition of the sci-fi weepie, The Midnight Sky begins at a point of apparent hopelessness. In the wake of a mostly undisclosed cataclysm, Earth has been rendered abruptly uninhabitable, its remaining population fleeing to underground shelters. One exception is Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney, who also directs), a wizened astronomer with terminal cancer who stays behind at a remote observatory somewhere in the wilds of Greenland. It seems that NASA had the foresight to send a handful of spacecraft to the far reaches of the galaxy in search of potential new habitats for humanity, and that one of those ships, the Aether (manned by Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Demian Bichir, Kyle Chandler, and Tiffany Boone), found a potential match on a distant moon of Jupiter. Unfortunately, no one managed to inform the crew of the Aether of the sudden apocalypse, and Augustine must trudge across the tundra to reach a communications outpost to tell them to abort their journey home. One final complication: Augustine must bring with him an adorable, mute child (Caolinn Springall), who also somehow got left behind in the evacuation.
For various reasons both tonal and textual, it is impossible to watch The Midnight Sky without thinking of the current reigning champions of the sci-fi weepie, Interstellar and Arrival. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t quite measure up on either side of the equation. As sci-fi, it certainly feels plausible in ways that Clooney couldn’t have foreseen (one scene in which Augustine warns his ward to put on a mask before leaving the lab is particularly eerie). But one doesn’t approach science fiction simply to say, “Yes, that could happen”; the story needs to dazzle us in equal measure with fantastical ideas, and The Midnight Sky simply doesn’t have enough of them. There are moments of wonder, to be sure– a lush alien world here, an uncannily real holodeck there– but these are all things we’ve seen before. Even the twist ending, which should serve as a flip-the-script game changer, just kind of registers as a “huh.” (The guess that I hazarded about halfway through the picture wound up being just a few degrees off, and while I try not to armchair quarterback, I like my version better). It doesn’t help that, for all its prestige Hollywood sheen, this is still a Netflix production; the bridge of the Aether is just a little too Star Trekky, and one nighttime set piece on the ice floes looks about as realistic as those in The Twentieth Century.
Likewise, The Midnight Sky comes up short as a weepie. Much of this problem is structural. We are meant to feel the brutal slog as Clooney braves the elements to protect this child and save some fragment of humanity, but the regular cutaways to spacefaring adventures create a distancing effect (this is compounded by the fact that the crew of the Aether are largely oblivious to the situation on earth until the final minutes, and thus do little to underscore the stakes). Likewise, I get the feeling that Clooney wants us to form a strong attachment to the individual astronaut characters, but because we spend so little time with them it’s hard to really feel like we know them. Moments like a spacewalking singalong to “Sweet Caroline” feel like they should be showstoppers, but they feel programmatic and rote (of course, I may just be saying this as a Bostonian; the fact that no one chimes in with a “SO GOOD! SO GOOD!” immediately obliterated my suspension of disbelief). Clooney wants us to feel that these characters are our friends; I found myself struggling to keep track of their names and occupations.
There’s a deeper flaw, too, which took me a day or two to fully put into words. I’ve always enjoyed George Clooney as an actor in spite of my indier-than-thou posturing; his effortless charisma allows him to slip comfortably into nearly any genre, from comedy to drama to vampire/gangster splatter film. But Clooney’s ample charm is rooted in his rugged durability– his stability— which proves to here be his achilles heel. For a sci-fi weepie to fully work, we need to first connect and identify with the protagonist, then watch as that character is emotionally and spiritually ripped asunder by the vastness of the universe. When I think of Interstellar or Arrival, the images that come to mind aren’t the gobsmacking special effects, but rather Matthew McConaughey ugly-crying over his backlog of video messages, or those incredible shots that are just enormous close-ups of Amy Adams’ watery, unblinking eyes. Clooney the director has here saddled Clooney the actor with every handicap at his disposal– alone, with a strange child, in the furthest corner of a dying planet, with terminal cancer and a broken heart and a big, bushy Santa beard– but it’s still somehow impossible to imagine him ultimately breaking. Nothing can change the fact that he’s George Clooney, the man you can absolutely depend on to save humanity through sheer goodness and fortitude. The best films in the genre work by dragging you to the brink of hopelessness. By embodying hope, Clooney negates this dynamic.
All that being said, I find it difficult to fully hate The Midnight Sky. In an ideal world this would be the norm for big-budget studio sci-fi; not great, but also not animated by a lust for shared universe tie-ins and billion dollar marketing deals. It’s a movie of modest ideas, but ideas nonetheless, made for grown-ups but suitable for family viewing, with just enough fodder to sustain a conversation in the (theoretical) car ride home. As I write this, the end of the pandemic is within sight, but it’s clear that much of our lives and our culture will never be quite the same. My hope, however slim, is that studios will begin to hedge their bets on tentpoles and blockbusters, padding out their schedule with smaller, quieter films that can be shuffled to VOD if need be. The Midnight Sky is not the classic that it tries to be, but it tries, and that ain’t nothing.
*- Excluding Tenet, which wasn’t really released so much as offered as a sacrifice to the box office gods.
The Midnight Sky
2020
dir. George Clooney
122 min.
Streaming Wednesday, 12/23 on Netflix
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