The Midnight Sky
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
We are playing catch up by reviewing films that are a part of the current awards season.
Oh boy. I heard all of the mediocre reviews about The Midnight Sky, and would have stayed clear of it had it not been nominated for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards, as it seemed very likely leading up to the announcement of nominees. Well, Alexandre Desplat somehow didn’t get nominated, but I hadn’t taken into account that it was going to be shown some love for its special effects. So, here I am, reviewing The Midnight Sky, and it’s one of those great reminders that watching a film is usually the best way of finding out why it didn’t work out. As it turns out, I didn’t hate it, like I expected. It does fall flat enough that it isn’t considerably great, but there are enough flashes here that this could have been the magnum opus that perhaps director (and star) George Clooney believed it would be.
The biggest problem is that the film tries to be ten perfect movies at the same time. It’s such a mutt of the science fiction genre, that its uneven nature damages the entire film entirely, regardless of how good the separate parts might be. The way the film begins, I got a bit of an Arrival or Interstellar kind of vibe: not a cynical sci-fi film, but one that places its scope and aesthetic at the forefront, and usually aimed for a more unusual story. To have moments tossed in that felt like The Martian, or Gravity, or a whole myriad of films that are so greatly different from one another, was a series of curveballs that I don’t think does The Midnight Sky any favours. There just wasn’t a definitive identity to this film, which is usually the selling point of any science fiction film (what kind of future or parallel dimension are we looking at this time?), but it’s the basic foundation of any story at all: what kind of a story are we even trying to tell? It’s literally the first thing a storyteller asks themselves before writing, every single time.
As strong as The Midnight Sky can be, it is far too uneven for much of its best moments to stick.
Nonetheless, there is enough going on in each of these countless stories that The Midnight Sky was at least a pleasant watch (but only once). Seeing these huge sets and landscapes, as well as the many approaches to spacial and scientific exploration that the film tosses at us, is such a treat. I do feel like much of the film is a series of wasted opportunities. I actually thought the picture started off quite strongly, and was only beginning to realize the qualms of The Midnight Sky about halfway through the second act. For the attempts alone, I can’t be too critical of this film. Maybe this was butchered in the editing room, or Clooney lost control of what he was trying to do midway through production, but there was definitely something noteworthy here that leads me to understand why Clooney pursued this tale in this way in the first place. Maybe if it was more focused and certain of its tone, The Midnight Sky could have been quite something (maybe even Clooney’s directorial masterpiece). Instead, we get what feels like a very long science fiction portfolio: a compilation of nice moments that just don’t mesh together at all.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.