Of the seven films he has directed, George Clooney’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi thrush The Midnight Sky it is certainly so ambitious in terms of technical logistics. It also delivers a heartfelt message.
Clooney plays Augustine, who may be the last man on Earth, an aging scientist with borderline cancer who works in an observatory in the Arctic Circle . Things change when a dumb seven-year-old girl, Iris (Caoilinn Springall) appears. It frees it, and they walk together through a radioactive ice storm to a station from which they hope to contact other people evacuated to orbit.
This is Clooney’s third study into the sci-fi genre, after appearing in Steven Soderbergh Solaris, a disappointing 2002 remake of Tarkovsky’s masterpiece in 1972, and the work of Alfonso Cuarón Gravity (2013), an Oscar-winning beat. But despite its huge budget price tag ($ 100m) and scope, Clooney sees The Midnight Sky as a close epic. “I enjoyed seeing a little story about repurchase and remorse embedded inside a larger oral canvas,” he says.
The Actor, who has eight Oscar nominations and two awards – Best Supporting Actor for 2005 Syriana and as a co-producer of the 2012 Best Picture winner Argo – pictured about his choices: “It’s not often you get to read a good piece of material.”
Speaking from his home in Hollywood, where the family spent most of the lock-in months, he says: “Netflix sent me to get involved, and I thought it is a big part. But I took an interesting view of the story, so I named Scott Stuber [head of Netflix’s film division] and said, ‘I know how to do this one as a director. We need to get out a lot of the conversation, because it should be a kind of melancholy reflection. ‘”
Clooney, 59, was inspired by a childhood memory of watching a 1962 film Gigot, in which Jackie Gleason plays a poor, abused janitor, who is also dumb and transformed as he begins to care for a little girl and her mother.
Diane Gardner and Jackie Gleason in ‘Gigot’, one of George Clooney’s inspiration behind ‘The Midnight Sky’ © Shutterstock
“Inside ER, I played pediatrician who was sometimes a woman and a drinker, but he was always taking care of children, ”he says. “And once you have that, you can do almost anything – you can be angry and upset – because they always say, ‘But the kids still like it! ‘”
Clooney was also drawn, despite the post-apocalyptic nature of the story The Midnight Sky, there was room for hope. “I really liked what he said about repurchasing. If you’re going to do something that is very dark and doesn’t make a big hole in your chest, at least there’s a feeling we could go out whole. ”
The Midnight Sky written by Mark L Smith, and based on the novel Good morning, midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton. “I hadn’t read the book,” Clooney explains, “but I thought the script was a beautiful story about what we can do for each other if we don’t pay attention, if we don’t listen. us to science, if we do not worry about division and hatred.
“It reminded me of today’s story On the beach [Stanley Kramer’s 1959 nuclear disaster movie, with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner], though that was more nihilistic and grimmer than The Midnight Sky, which has hope and freedom. ”
Clooney as Augustine and Caoilinn Springall as Magazine in ‘The Midnight Sky’
The scale was frightening at first: “Over 300 people were involved in the project, as we were basically shooting two different films: one in the Arctic Circle, and another on Earth. . I knew it would be a poor hunt, but don’t worry if it’s a project that inspires you. ”
Taking advantage of the film’s message, he says: “Repentance is a dangerous thing – it can make you eat alive. We all regret the dumb things we did, but there is real remorse associated with feeling, ‘All those years have run out, and I haven’t achieved what I wanted. ‘
“My character is looking for a solution before it’s too late. He wants to do everything right for the things he did not do. That search for repurchase is deep in all of us, no matter what our lies, and our film is about a very big one. ”
The film was wrapped just as the pandemic hit the world, making its main human message more compelling. “As the crisis took over, it became clearer that the most important thing in the story was the ability to communicate with each other and the need to be with the people we love.
“Times like this, a year like this, drive the fact that we need to be connected, to make sure we make the best use of every day.
“I was raised to believe that we are all here together, and we are leaving here together. This pandemic has shown us more than anything that there are no boundaries; the virus doesn’t care about country or class. ”
The crisis has had a major impact on Clooney’s personal agenda. “Lately, I’ve been focusing on so many other things. I have a twin, Ella and Alexander, and my wife Amal has a foundation: there is a lot of work to be done in the world as well as just acting and directing.
“I come from a comfortable place in my life right now. I’ve been very fortunate, and I have the opportunity to spend more time focusing on issues that matter to me, and I hope it’s important to the world. ”
It was important to look out for others something in Clooney during his upbringing in Kentucky, where his father was a radio presenter and television anchor, and his mother a consultant. “Ever since I was very young, every Christmas morning we would go to a stranger’s house, people who were having a bad time. We would give gifts to the whole family. I had to cut lawns and rake leaves to buy gifts for kids I had never met before. That is an element that we instill in our children, that we are dependent on each other, and not just the immediate family. “
When asked if he has changed as an actor since becoming a father in 2017, he says: “A good script is a good script. I don’t have to be a heroin addict to play heroin addiction, and I don’t have to be a father to play my father, which I did before [in 2011 in The Descendants]. ”
But Clooney likes to tell one story about being a working father. “I had to do some harrowing scenes where I fall in the water. We did it in a big tub outside on the stage in London, and my kids came to visit that day. I had to come out in this horrible time, and I’ve lost my thing that keeps me alive, and my daughter goes, ‘Papa, I want to come swim with you! ‘So now that I tell my children I have to go to work, they think I’ll go swimming.’
‘The Midnight Sky’ is in theaters now and on Netflix from 23 December
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