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George Clooney on ‘Midnight Sky’, ‘ER’, what your kids want from Santa Claus
George Clooney talks to USA TODAY about his new movie “The Midnight Sky” and what his kids are asking Santa Claus for this Christmas.
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Spoiler alert! The following details the ending of Netflix’s “The Midnight Sky”, so be careful if you haven’t watched it yet.
George Clooney’s apocalyptic space drama, “The Midnight Sky” (now broadcast on Netflix), brings an end to Earth, even when its ending offers a glimpse of hope for the future of humanity.
The film follows astronomer Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), a terminally ill man who decides to live his life in the Arctic Circle while deadly radiation spreads across the globe. He protects a clandestine young woman named Iris (Caoilinn Springall) while trying to alert a crew of astronauts who are returning to stay away from the planet.
Augustine communicates with Sully (Felicity Jones), a pregnant member of the Aether spacecraft – who is returning from a newly discovered Jupiter moon K23 – and the public discovers that Sully is actually Iris Sullivan, the adult daughter that Augustine never met. Which means that little Iris was an invention of a dying man’s imagination and also a symbol of his redemption.
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This “moving” and revealing scene “was the reason I wanted to make the film,” Jones told USA TODAY. “This kind of reconciliation with the past is a very exciting time.”
Living with regret (in Augustine’s case, not connecting with her daughter until the end) is something that Clooney thought a lot about doing “Midnight Sky”.
“I know people who are older than me, who live with a lot of – big, big regrets in their lives,” he says. “And it doesn’t get better when you get older. It ignites like cancer in you and makes you bitter and angry and (irritated) with your own time and all those things. The desperate need for redemption, in some ways, is molecular for us. “
For Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), the pilot of Aether, what is essential for him is to return home. After spending the two-year mission longing for his family, he decides to take an escape pod back to Earth with his friend Sanchez (Demian Bichir) to try to find his loved ones. Meanwhile, Sully and her partner, Commander Tom Adewole (David Oyelowo), choose to return to K23, a habitable place for humans, and virtually restart the human race.
What Chandler liked about Mitchell’s ending was that, at 55 and a family man, he understood the decision. “I still want to smell the ocean again. I want to touch Mother Earth, “he says.” I can’t just go back and ride in the cold space to this new place we found, this new world. “
As for Sully and Tom, they have a moment of silence where they realize the enormity of what they are about to do. As the credits roll, they return to work on the ship.
“There is a strange peace at the end, isn’t there?” Jones says. “There is a pragmatism about that, which is quite interesting, having gone through an almost apocalypse, as we have been through in the last few months. It’s amazing how the practice just takes over.
“Furthermore, it is a celebration of love in a sense. It is the love between Adewole and Sully that will keep them alive. Your focus is on your child’s future and ensuring that it is a safe future. “
Oyelowo, feels that the ending – inspired by “The Graduate” – is indicative of the meditative and cerebral qualities of the film. “You can’t interpret the emotion of what it would be like to be essentially Adam and Eve,” he says. “What would it be like to return to a planet knowing that it is almost ready? What is it like to have the task of finding a planet for humanity to colonize and inhabit? These are existential questions that are simply mind-blowing.
“You can only reproduce the reality of what is in front of you,” he says. “It gives the audience time to breathe and reflect and perhaps even project what they would do under these circumstances. This ending is kind of perfect, because what else is there to do but continue with it now? “