The midnight sky
Director: George Clooney
Cast: George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler, Caoilinn Springall, Sophie Rundle, Ethan Peck
You can be a great actor, but a stupid director. We have seen many. But we had hoped that George Clooney could be an exception – a great actor and equally adept at directing. . He was, in the beginning. His 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck was poignant with its black-and-white footage dramatizing the battle between television journalist Edward R. Murrow and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was a beautiful piece of work that took us into the world of the news broadcasts of the time. Clooney’s The Ides of March in 2011 was equally gripping with a story about the selfish political culture that cared little for the masses. But when he made The Monuments Men three years later about how Nazis stole art and later attempted to retrieve it, Clooney fell off the cliff!
His latest outing, The Midnight Sky, now on Netflix, is just as disastrous. It is doomsday for the earth in 2049 which has been torn apart by toxic radiation. Almost all inhabitants are dead. But scientist Augustine Lofthouse (played by Clooney) remains at his pole post. At least he doesn’t have many days left. He is suffering from a terminal illness. He stays on and hopes to contact any space mission that may return to Earth to try and warn them of the catastrophic event. There’s only one up there, Aether, who returns after finding a new planet, K-23, that seems habitable.
The rest of The Midnight Sky, an adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 sci-fi novel Good Morning, Midnight, is all about how Lofthouse tries to connect with Aether. We have a few on board, such as Sully (Felicity Jones) and Commander Tom Adewole (David Oyelowo). They are a couple expecting their first child, and the other crew members keep thinking of a name for the girl.
Meanwhile, Lofthouse discovers there is a stowaway in his position – Iris, just seven, played with a touch of beautiful innocence by Caoilinn Springall. After initial irritation, the two bond. She is not stupid, but refuses to speak. And Clooney is of little help, with his gray beard that looks like a gloomy Santa Claus, depressed and downcast. So very different from his own real life character and the kind of rambunctious movies he made or acted in.
The Midnight Sky has beautiful visuals, but in times like this, when the world is in crisis, do we need a plot like this: bleak and leave us feeling hopeless?
The movie may be science fiction, some sort of fantasy fairy tale, but otherwise I can only wonder why a man like Clooney, who is so full of life, so high-spirited, the hell made a movie that is disastrously depressing and can Push. the little joy we have now – with Christmas and New Year ahead of us – from our lives.
Maybe Clooney was trying to tell us that people watch out, respect the planet (global warming, etc.) or else you’ll get a kick out of it. But he could have done it with some joy, some hope, not this kind of dark despair.
(Gautaman Bhaskaran is a film critic and author of a biography of Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
Rating: 2/5
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