Little dialogue. Some action. Whole lot of landscapes.
Netflix released its original sci-fi/drama âThe Midnight Skyâ in December 2020. Over the course of two hours, viewers follow scientist Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney) as he attempts to warn the space mission Aether, that it is not safe to return to Earth.
Years ago, Aether departed with a five-person crew to scout K-23, a Jupiter moon that Augustine hypothesized as habitable. The story shifts between scenes of Augustine on Earth and the astronauts in space, as they try to contact one another.
The first scene is quite literally shots of empty rooms with the background noises of Augustine fixing a meal. [Microwave whirring.] [Microwave beeps.] [Dishes clattering.] Nearly two whole minutes pass before a single word is said, but text on the screen provides the details that the setting is the Barbeau Observatory in the Arctic Circle in February 2049, three weeks after âthe event.â
Cinematic visions of the near future are often bleak, but in George Clooney’s “The Midnight Sky” production designer Jim Bissell wanted the stark environments to also have a sense of poetry. The film, set following an undefined global catastrophe, follows a lone scientist (Clooney) as he journeys across the Arctic with a mysterious young girl in hopes of stopping the spaceship Aether from returning to the catastrophe that Earth has become.
For Bissell, who worked closely with cinematographer Martin Ruhe and VFX supervisors Matt Kasmir and Chris Lawrence, the visuals needed to evoke the sense of isolation felt through the narrative.
George Clooney and Caoilinn Springall in a scene from “The Midnight Sky.” (Philippe Antonello/Netflix )
“I can’t help you. You understand? I’m the wrong person. I’m the wrong person.” – George Clooney’s Augustine to a fellow traveler in “The Midnight Sky”
As rough as it’s been in the real world this year, the planet is in even worse shape in a number of recent movies.
In “Greenland,” stadium-sized chunks of an asteroid are wiping out entire cities and killing millions.
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In “Wonder Woman 1984,” the world has been thrown into chaos, and we’re on the brink of nuclear war.
By Jake Coyle | Associated Press
How has George Clooney been handling isolation? Aside from spending time with his wife, Amal Clooney, and their 3-year-old twins, and editing his new film, âThe Midnight Sky,â heâs relied on, like many others, a text chain with pals and Zoom. He just got off one with Matt Damon and John Krasinski.
âIn some ways, we keep more in touch now than we did before,â says Clooney, speaking by phone from London.
âThe Midnight Sky,â which Clooney directed and stars in, is an apocalyptic sci-fi drama with some striking solitude. A thickly bearded Clooney plays an astronomer with terminal cancer living at the Barbeau Observatory in the Arctic Circle. Itâs 2049. When cataclysm covers the globe, he and a young, unspeaking girl (Caoilinn Springall) are potentially all that remains, along with the returning crew of a space expedition to a Jupiter moon.
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