George Clooney is probably best-known to Hollywood fans as a true screen icon, Oscar-winning actor, and the heartthrob of every woman's dreams. However, it may surprise some to learn that the man has also cultivated himself a directing career and that he has been behind the camera for nearly 20 years from his debut in Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002), historical drama Good Night, And Good Luck (2005), political thriller The Ides Of March (2011), to his most recent collaboration with the Coen Brothers in Suburbicon (2017).
Now, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and apocalyptic scare, Clooney is set to launch his latest directorial effort as well as star in The Midnight Sky, a sci-fi drama. The post-apocalyptic thriller is coming to Netflix on Dec 23 and The Midnight Sky will be his first movie project for the streaming giant.
The film is based on the novel Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton and scripted by The Revenant writer Mark L. Smith. It follows the parallel stories of Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), a lone scientist holed up in an isolated Arctic outpost, and Sully Rembshire (Felicity Jones) and her fellow astronauts in the Aether spacecraft as they try to return home after a long mission in search of a new planet. While the crew of Aether aren't aware of a mysterious global catastrophe taking place back on Earth, Augustine has to make a hazardous journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland so he can stop Sully and the crew in time from returning to an uninhabitable Earth. While one would expect The Midnight Sky to be heart-pounding thriller about a mission in space with tons of action sequences, Clooney said the film is more of a drama with an intimate story full of silences and internal thought about human connection.
"When I got the script, the first thing I thought when I read it was that this is an intimate story about people trying to get home and people seeking redemption, especially since Augustine is filled with regret. To me, that is a small story but you can put it on this giant canvas by including space and the Arctic," said Clooney during a recent roundtable interview via Zoom.
"I knew that I wanted music to play another integral role in the film, so we invited film composer Alexandre Desplat to join. I called him and said you're gonna write more music for this than you've written for any movie before. I knew that I wanted the music to be able to explain and tell us in a meditative way where we are in life and where we are in the story. So, it always felt small to me. It always felt intimate."
The Midnight Sky isn't the first film about a space mission that Clooney has featured in. He's been involved with other space settings before such as in Steven Soderbergh's Solaris (2002) and Alfonso Cuarón's Oscar winner Gravity (2013). The 59-year-old actor said that he had learned a lot from working with those two directors and that he was now ready to tackle outer space from the director's chair with this movie.
"I've learned many things from working in those films. For Alfonso, I particularly learned about action sequences and the physicality of being out in space. Meanwhile, with Steven, who was my partner for 10 years as well, I learned everything I know about filmmaking that I know today. However, Alfonso was also interesting to work with because his approach in Gravity was different from other space films, especially in terms of understanding the meaning of zero gravity and how there is no north or south or no up and down. Instead, everything is constantly rotating and moving and if you watch the film, it's doing just that," explained Clooney.
"Once we realised that there is no version of up or down, it meant that the camera was going to constantly be rotating and moving. Yet, the trick with that is that you can't do it too much otherwise it will make everyone want to throw up. So it's about moderating, finding a way to count, and finding ways to do what Alfonso learned and to try to introduce that back into our film."
Apart from outer space scenes, there's also outdoor scenes which were shot in Iceland and England with a massive snowstorm that looked brutal.
"We were in Iceland in the first week of shooting and it was like -40C and it's 112kph wind gusts. My eyelids would freeze shut after about a little over a minute and two people would walk me back to a truck and take a blow dryer so that I could open my eyes before we'd go back out and shoot again. With elements like that, it's really helpful as an actor because it really helps you as you don't have to fake being cold," he said.
"But it was also really fun. We had to be prepared for those situations because we only had a certain amount of time. The light in the sky begins to emerge around 11.30am and it got dark again at 3pm. So, you had to be ready to go when the weather allowed for the Sun and clear skies to come through. During shooting, it wasn't snow storms hitting us but actually wind gusts blowing these massive tornadoes. When we would see one coming towards us, we would roll the camera and start shooting as fast we could before it went away and then wait again for the next round. So it was definitely an adventure."
Joining Clooney in the cast ensemble in The Midnight Sky is a parade of Hollywood's A-listers such as Academy Award-nominated Felicity Jones, Golden-Globe nominated David Oyelowo, Emmy-winner Kyle Chandler and Academy Award nominee Demián Bichir, as well as eight-year-old newcomer Caoilinn Springall. According to Clooney, there was a lot of tenderness while filming The Midnight Sky both on and off the screen. One such warm moment was when Jones, the British actress who plays the role of astronaut Sully, announced her pregnancy while filming, which led the director and the team to try to come up with unique ways to work her pregnancy into the post-apocalyptic script.
"Well, there was a lot of tenderness and it got more even more tender when Felicity announced that she was pregnant. First, it caused panic and suddenly the crew became much more of a family to protect Felicity and look out for the baby. All that stuff grew into this beautiful thing," he said.
"And for the little girl [Springall], she was such a wonderful actress that she didn't have to act as she had only one line in the entire film. She just stood there and she would look up and listen. So, I knew if the little girl was part of it, then it would be tender. If you didn't like the little girl, or if she irritated you somehow, then it wouldn't be. But she was spectacular."
Since the main theme in The Midnight Sky is about family, fatherhood and mortality, Clooney who also has twins was asked if becoming a father changed his perspective on family in any way.
"I started pretty late. I had the kids when I was 57 and now I'm 59 years. So basically, by the time they're out of diapers, I'll be in diapers right? So, mortality does become an issue because I'd like to live long enough to see them grow. I have to say if I was 25 years younger it'd be a lot easier, so I do look at mortality in just physical terms.
"However, in general, you get to look at life in the way you look at these things. For example, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, did I do everything that I could have possibly gotten out of my life? Did I approach the things that I wanted to? And did I stand up for the things I believed in and fight for the things that I needed to fight for? If the answers to that is mostly yes, then mortality and all of those concerns are a lot less," he pointed out.
"But the problem with Augustine in the movie is he lives with such deep regret which is a cancerous sore inside your soul, particularly as you get older. In fact, he's in desperate need of redemption and that makes mortality a lot harder to deal with."
