The Midnight Sky

Last night I had the chance to see The Midnight Sky, a movie that I have been anticipating for weeks, and I found it to be incredibly thought-provoking and surprisingly poignant.  In 2049 an unnamed cataclysmic event is in the process of destroying the Earth.  An observatory in the Arctic is evacuated as people try to return home to their loved ones.  Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney), an astrophysicist who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, elects to stay behind because, as we learn from several flashbacks to a failed relationship, he has no one in his life.  As he monitors the satellites, he discovers that the Aether, a deep-space craft that has been on a two-year mission to explore one of Jupiter's habitable moons, is on its way back to Earth.  He also discovers that a mysterious child named Iris (Caoillinn Springall) has inadvertently been left behind at the observatory.  He tries to contact the Aether to warn them of Earth's impending doom but the antenna at the observatory is not strong enough to reach them.  He makes the decision to go further north to a weather station with a stronger antenna and embarks on an increasingly perilous journey with Iris.  Meanwhile, the crew of the Aether, Sully (Felicity Jones), Tom (David Oyelowo), Maya (Tiffany Boone), Sanchez (Demian Bichir), and Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), must make dangerous repairs to restore communication with Lofthouse.  When they learn the truth about the Earth's fate, the crew must make difficult decisions about their futures.  This movie is a meditative portrait of a man who has spent his life avoiding personal responsibilities only to become solely responsible for a young girl and the crew of a spacecraft.  His character arc is very compelling and the twist at the end is incredibly powerful.  While there are some spectacular action sequences, such as a space walk in the middle of flying debris and a terrifying blizzard, the pace is very slow and deliberate so it might not appeal to fans of more traditional sci-fi thrillers.  Clooney gives a riveting performance, one of his best, and the supporting cast is uniformly excellent.  The visuals are spectacular and the score by Alexandre Desplat, one of my favorite film composers, is absolutely brilliant.  Even though the narrative is sometimes a bit derivative (there are lots of comparisons to Gravity, The Martian, Ad Astra, and The Revenant), I was still thinking about the themes of isolation, survival, and hope long after I left the theater.  I definitely recommend seeing this on the biggest screen possible but it will stream on Netflix beginning December 23.