Minuit dans l’univers (The Midnight Sky)

Midnight in the Universe (The Midnight Sky) is a post-apocalyptic tale in which a lonely Arctic scientist, Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney), tries to prevent an astronaut crew from returning to Earth after a mysterious global disaster. Mark L. Smith's screenplay adapts Lily Brooks-Dalton's bestseller, Good Morning, Midnight, to the screen. This is George Clooney's seventh film after Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Good Night and Good Luck (2005), Leatherheads (2008), The Ides of March (2011), The Monuments Men (2014) and Welcome to Suburbicon (2017).

Adapting a novel to the screen is always a perilous exercise, so much so that it is necessary to grasp its foundations in order to give life to an often complex narrative whose literary form allows the reader's imagination to speak for itself. In the present case, we can only recognize George Clooney's desire not to take a disconcertingly easy path, and his new film shows a certain willingness to improve his work as a director and above all to develop a true gift for storytelling that allows viewers to let themselves be immersed in an apocalyptic world in which the human race seems to have practically disappeared from the earth's surface. It is therefore not by chance that, as great travelers, man turned to space to search for a welcoming planet, a habitable moon of Jupiter, K-23, to rebuild a true society.

In the image of the earth that has become a sick planet that has lost all its splendor, George Clooney embodies a brilliant scientist, Augustine Lofthouse, who has always had difficulty building serious relationships with those around her and, following her terminal cancer, prefers to remain alone on an Arctic base. However, he will discover that a little girl named Iris has also stayed on this base and his character Augustine Lofthouse will do everything to save her, including finding another welcoming base in the Arctic and crossing dangerous areas with her, thus using her last strength to carry out her mission and especially to make the spacecraft Æther stop heading towards the earth to return to K-23. But is Iris real or a simple hallucination caused by his treatment.

Numerous films such as Midnight in the Universe (The Midnight Sky) have approached the end of the world without resorting to outrageous spectacular effects, but by highlighting the behavior and psychology of the characters facing a world that has become dangerous. One will think in particular of the films Light of My Life by Casey Affleck and Greenland by Ric Roman Waugh. Of course, Midnight in the Universe (The Midnight Sky) benefits from excellent special effects in particular by showing Jupiter's moon but also the spacecraft in which a crew is trying to carry out its mission.

By placing the action in two distinct universes and by playing skillfully on a successful editing, Midnight in the Universe (The Midnight Sky) stands out as a successful science-fiction movie but whose length would have deserved to be shorter by privileging a better rhythm than this disjointed tempo which spoils in a way the pleasure taken to see it discovered.

The Midnight Sky
Directed by George Clooney
Produced by Grant Heslov, George Clooney, Keith Redmon, Bard Dorros, Cliff Roberts
Screenplay by Mark L. Smith
Based on Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Starring George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler, Caoilinn Springall
Music by Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography: Martin Ruhe
Edited by Stephen Mirrione
Production companies : Smokehouse Pictures, Anonymous Content
Distributed by Netflix
Release date: December 11, 2020 (United States)
Running time: 122 minutes

Viewed on December 23, 2020 (Netflix)

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