The last big Netflix production of this year 2020 promised to be grandiose : George Clooney walking in the powdery footsteps of Gravity to offer us as a Christmas present a tender and gripping film about an Earth disaster and the impossible return of astronauts on mission. But the appointment with the nuggets that have marked the Netflix catalog this year is missed, and we embark with Midnight in the universe for a journey that, not without quality, seems nevertheless very tasteless. February 2049, 3 weeks after an unknown event that made our good old planet perfectly uninhabitable, except under a few underground shelters. A man, played by George Clooney, with a long and graying beard, decides to stay in the Arctic pole, in order to alert the ships bound for Earth to turn back so as not to be trapped in this unbreathable atmosphere. A post-apocalyptic scenario as it comes out a dozen each year stands before us, where the fragility of man is placed as a central element behind an extraterrestrial pretext. Nothing new under the Sun, since Clooney is placed in the legacies of Interstellar, Ad Astra and Gravity, which each had their peculiarities allowing them to reach the heights of the genre.
"Only one being is missing, and everything is depopulated"
Far from catastrophic emergencies, the first moments of Midnight in the universe pose a long and slow temporality, like a kind of sweet agony of humanity forced to leave its native Earth to take refuge in the underground. The migrant crowds pose the first stakes, then abandon us: the rest will only be in the company of Clooney and Iris, a little abandoned girl with the man a little misanthropic on the edges, both lost in the infinity of the ice floe, and the crew of a ship that returns to Earth after its mission. 
This double unity of place will play the role of contrast and opposition between a ship full of hope for humanity, and an abandoned and destroyed Earth, symbol of a past that is no more. While on our planet families are deconstructed, the characters are withdrawn and do not know how to communicate in the same way, privileging different senses that do not answer each other, in space the ship and its crew seem hopeful, warm, turned towards a positive and reassuring future, towards a new family construction that may have a chance to succeed. The immensity of ice paradoxically opposes the enclosed and reassuring spaces of the space shuttle, in a narrative structure that confronts us with the inevitable. Like its predecessors, Midnight in the Universe does not miss the rendezvous of the introspective journey, moment of existential questioning while everything collapses around. Accompanied by the little girl touches everything, the character of George Clooney crosses the icy and interior storms, consumed by loneliness, and also by the lack of subtlety : the symbols are linked until the confusing climax that without breaking the so-called slow and soporific tenderness sinks the characters into an incredibility that they will not be able to get rid of.
Only one motivation is missing, and everything is pretty bland
Beyond a structure of opposition that works quite well, Midnight in the Universe quickly finds itself quite smooth and bland: Clooney's eighth film as a director fails to establish a real suspense and stakes rich enough to keep us in suspense and settle us in this sense of urgency inevitable to any good post-apocalyptic film. As a belated realization, the universe of the film realizes itself this lethargic flatness by trying to bring unfounded disasters, which bring nothing to the construction of its characters. The scenario slides on these protagonists cut off from the world, without jostling them and bringing them progress; Everything remains irretrievably static, to crash like a big dish in a final revelation without flavor, like a message of hope or rather crude repetition. 
These failures could have been saved by an aesthetic essential for this genre, but it is not so: photography more than smooth brings only revised images of space, cruelly lacking originality. Without reaching the visual beauty of a Gravity, Midnight in the universe is enough to a few striking scenes that are not enough to raise the level of CGI and inlays more than limit, which suffer from lighting effects unflattering to the eye. So, maybe the music of the great Alexandre Desplat can save the whole thing? Unfortunately, it is still a failure when you find yourself facing terribly old-fashioned musical effects, despite a few moments that once again try to catch up at arm's length. This balancing act between the good and the not so good will not be enough to tip the scales enough to avoid an easily forgettable film. With characters without consistency, too much déjà vu in its construction and visual and sound effects sometimes quite limiting, Midnight in the universe misses its appointment with the stars of the genre, to most certainly and unfortunately crash into the abyss of the Netflix catalog. A film that is not worth seeing, but that will have at least had the merit of trying.
