*Spoilers for The Midnight Sky

During every awards cycle, there are what I like to call the “A-list” and the “B-list” of awards movies. The A-list award movies are the movies which are most certainly going to get nominated. This year, some of those films will probably include the likes of Nomadland, Minari, One Night in Miami, Judas and the Black Messiah, and others. Then there is the B-list, which are movies that have all the makings of award films and were clearly made with an eye towards awards, but are not going to get any major recognition. 

I believe The Midnight Sky and News of the World to be B-list award films. Neither has gotten quite the traction or critical reception they need to be top award contenders and while they may get nominated in smaller categories, I don’t see either as having a chance as top contenders. This is not to say they aren’t good, they’re just not quite as good as they think they are.

Along with being both B-list award films, they also have something else in common which I’d like to explore a little deeper. Both films feature older men who are accompanied on a journey by a young girl, who is either completely mute or speaks very little (or speaks a different language). This setup has become a trope, and one I think has fascinating implications. We’ll flesh that out further, but for now, let’s look at each film individually.

The Midnight Sky was released on Netflix in December. It is directed by and stars George Clooney, who plays Augustine, the last man on Earth. Augustine is trying to make contact with a group of astronauts on their way home who have no idea of the catastrophe that has wiped out civilization. Augustine discovers a mute young girl (Caoilinn Springall) to be left on Earth with him, and she joins him on the journey to warn the astronauts.  

The Midnight Sky looks beautiful, and Netflix obviously spared no expense in making it compete with the technical achievements of other recent space films, of which there have been many (Gravity, First Man, The Martian, Interstellar…). The setup of the film is intriguing as well, and there are a couple of exciting setpieces with Clooney and Springall fighting against the arctic wilderness. However, The Midnight Sky promises a meditation on grief and loneliness which never really lands. There are too many characters and none of them get their due, and there is too much vagueness about the catastrophes of Earth to feel real or unnerving. The cinematography is the most beautiful and interesting thing about it. 

Meanwhile, News of the World reunites director Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks after they worked together on Captain Phillips. Here, Hanks plays another captain, Captain Kidd, a man who makes his living going from town to town reading newspapers. When he comes across an orphaned young girl (Helena Zengel), he decides to take her on an arduous journey to get her to her relatives. The use of the immediate post-Civil War setting and its atmosphere of paranoia and distrust, along with the film’s emphasis on stories and the role of journalism (which brings to mind Hank’s role in 2017’s The Post) make News of the World feel timely without being too preachy (save for a few scenes). However, the relationship between Kidd and the kid is clearly the film’s emotional core, and most of that comes from Hanks. The screenplay does very little to establish why Kidd makes the sacrifices he does for the girl. Instead, the film relies on Hank’s casting. Why does Kidd drop everything to go on this journey for the girl’s sake? Because he’s Tom Hanks! Do you think Tom Hanks is going to let anything happen to a child? No! Because he’s Tom Hanks, and Tom Hanks always does the right thing, and that is that. From this foundation, Hanks and Zengel are able to build a more fleshed out, interesting relationship which carries the film. 

Both films are fine, with News of the World edging out as the better one. Yet what I find interesting is how they embody this emerging trope of a gruff older man + near-silent young girl. I first noticed this dynamic in 2017’s Logan, with Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine and Dafne Keen as Laura/X23, but other examples can be seen in War For the Planet of the Apes, Eleven in Stranger Things, Boo from Monsters Inc, along with many other variations. Vulture, upon the release of Logan, published an article about this phenomenon (with a focus on violent little girl characters), which includes the key observation that the girls in these roles “[exist] to be observed as an object of contemplation.” No matter how much agency she has in the story, her presence is something that causes the leading man to reflect upon himself, usually about his failings as a father, or what could have been. This is most explicit in The Midnight Sky, where it is revealed the little girl is not even real, but is George Clooney’s character imagining his daughter, who is actually Felicity Jones’s astronaut character. 

Now I am actually quite fond of this trope, and it’s easy to see its appeal. What is the similarity between the apocalypse of The Midnight Sky and the wild frontier of News of the World, or the world of the X-Men, or a science-fiction dystopia? Parenthood! Men embracing their paternal instinct! Drama is created through differences and contrasts, and since an older man and a young girl are seen as opposites, characters with this dynamic automatically have great cinematic potential.  

Yet, while emotionally this is an engaging trope, it comes at a cost. It is great to see these movies and genres- science fiction, western, superhero, etc.- that have traditionally been unwelcoming to women, now include them and allow young girls to see themselves in the picture through this trope. But the silence of these young girls, and how they rarely have personalities beyond being objects of observation, means they are not really characters. They could be replaced with a dog the male characters loves, and nothing would change. I wonder what it would be like to replace many of these little girls with grown women who come alongside the protagonist and join them as equals (maybe even without an obligatory romance!). Or, at least, if these young girls are allowed to speak, and take action in these stories. 

Consider that there is no equivalent trope for young boy characters. You don’t see many movies where older women are taking young boys under their wing. Firstly, because older women don’t exist in film. Secondly, if a young boy is in a film, they’re usually going on their own adventure. They’re not there as prompts for other characters to discover more about themselves. These boys are active agents of their own adventure. They are being prepped to be the next Tom Hanks or George Clooney, and maybe one day will be old enough to have their own silent surrogate daughter. 

– Madeleine D

*Spoilers

Can you imagine being trapped inside of your home for days on end, only being able to be with your housemates, unable to leave your house because nothing is open and there’s nothing to do and there is a looming threat of death?

Well most of us by now actually do know what that is like, thanks to shelter-in-place and quarantine orders. But in case you want to relive the claustrophobia, Vivarium, a small horror movie that got lost in the COVID shutdown of theaters, is here to give you just that, except this time with a lot more metaphor and existential wandering!

The movie tells the story of Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots), a young couple who go to look at houses in a suburb called Yonder. When they try to leave the neighborhood, they find themselves driving in circles. There is no exit in the empty, lifeless maze. Gemma and Tom return to the house to find a box of supplies at their doorstep and a baby boy, with only a note saying that they must raise the baby, and only then will they be released. 

Vivarium is full of interesting horror imagery and promising ideas, but is devoid of emotion. This is primarily because of our two leads. The film spends little time setting up the characters and their relationship. We only get the vaguest sense of how deep their bond is, or their individual personalities, and the moment the kid comes into their lives, they become stripped of all individual identity. This is because Tom and Gemma are not characters so much as they are archetypes.

They are archetypes for Man and Woman, Father and Mother, Husband and Wife, even Adam and Eve. Vivarium turns out to be a long extended metaphor for parenting, and, specifically, gender roles in parenting. And it’s a pretty bleak one, considering that the characters are stripped of individuality once they become parents and in what the movie shows their roles to be.

First, there is Tom. Tom never bonds with the boy. He goes through the motions of taking care of him, but he won’t even call the child “him;” he calls the child “it.” When he discovers that the grass outside can be dug into, he begins digging day in and day out, hoping it will lead to some kind of escape. It brings Tom a sense of purpose and is initially out of a noble desire to help him and Gemma, but soon it’s clear that nothing will come of it, and the work quickly devolves into an act of selfishness and avoidance. And this big hole he digs? Well, it turns out that Tom is literally digging his own grave. It brings to mind the curse given to Adam in the Garden of Eden: 

“‘Cursed is the ground because of you;  in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust,  and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19). 

Tom works the ground relentlessly for nothing, and he returns to the ground in death. Tom’s actions speak to the difficulties men struggled with for years- what it really means to be a provider for a family, and the temptations to use work as a self-centered escape from the stresses of family and domestic life. Tom’s desire to protect Gemma is twisted and beaten down until he’s a hollowed-out shell, and he bears the shame of not being able to defend his family from external forces. 

Then there is Gemma. While she refuses to call herself the boy’s mother, she quickly reveals a reluctant maternal instinct towards the boy. She protects the boy from Tom and tries to engage and teach him, but she is punished harshly for her efforts. This too echoes the curse upon Eve:

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). 

Like many women, Gemma’s relationship with the boy, her appointed child, is full of strife and suffering. Her well-being becomes codependent on his. She and Tom struggle for power and leadership in their relationship, and Gemma even suffers violence from Tom. The fractured relationship between the two allows for some Freudian implications for Gemma and the boy. At one point the boy spies on Tom and Gemma having sex and later, when Gemma lies down beside the boy one evening, he puts his arm around her in a suggestive manner, while Tom is asleep outside in the hole in the ground. Oedipus much? Again, representing womankind, Gemma carries the weight of the home’s brokenness. 

At the end of the film, Tom works himself to death, and Gemma is left alone. When the boy is completely raised, the boy kills her, her usefulness finished. While this is obviously extreme, it isn’t too far from what many women feel as they age and when their children leave the nest- older women are routinely rendered invisible, hit with the double whammy of ageism and sexism in the larger society. They are not seen as being sexually attractive, are no longer marriageable or able to bear and raise children, and are often professionally stunted. So in other words, they have none of the things that our society sees as making a woman worthwhile. 

All of this leaves the question that must come with stories that function primarily as allegories or metaphors: what’s the point? Vivarium says that life sucks, we’re stuck with generational sins, the genders will struggle forever for power and domination, you’ll either die from capitalism or social marginalization, and child-rearing is a trial. Oh, and the suburbs are evil. So what?

Simon Abrams expresses this frustration well in his review for the film, saying, “Understood, but who cares? If all you can show me is what you think isn’t genuine, you leave me with zero idea about what you think authenticity looks like, or why I should care.” Vivarium is an interesting watch, to be sure, but because the film doesn’t have any substance outside of its metaphor or anything to root for or offer up as an authentic alternative, then it accomplishes nothing but to reinforce despair. Like we need more of that. 

-Madeleine D.