The Midnight Sky

UK Release Date. 11 December 2020
Certification. 12A
Running Time. 1 hour 58 mins
Director. George Clooney
Cast. Demián Bichir, Tiffany Boone, Kyle Chandler, George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Caoilinn Springall.
Rating. 62%

Review.

Up until now, George Clooney's track record as a director has been fairly uneven. From the peaks of his impressive debut, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind and the Academy Award-nominated Good Night, And Good Luck, to the troughs of the muddled, disconnected threads of Monuments Men and the ill-conceived Suburbicon.

With The Midnight Sky, Clooney expands his horizons as a filmmaker - a first attempt at directing science fiction - and while The Midnight Sky is heartfelt and often beautiful to look at, the film routinely falls foul of some familiar genre tropes.

Based on a novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Midnight Sky follows a terminally ill scientist, Dr Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney), in the immediate aftermath of an unseen apocalyptic event on Earth. The story itself perilously teeters between being overly derivative and disarmingly earnest; earlier films, the like of Sunshine, Moon, Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian and Ad Astra are all inevitably referenced as the film unfolds.  

The technical aspects of the film are first-rate. Clooney, who has previously starred in Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris and Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, certainly seems to have learnt from these directors. From its vast cosmic vistas to the realistic yet striking designs of the spacecraft, The Midnight Sky is beautifully rendered.

Yes, Clooney has problems with pacing, and the action is intermittent. The film doesn’t always hang together, but even with its faults, The Midnight Sky ends up being quite affecting. Clooney has produced a commendable first attempt at an often difficult genre to master - the cerebral science fiction film - and whilst The Midnight Sky frequently retreads old ground, it does so with aesthetics and grace.