Writer/director Taika Waititi channels his earlier work like Hunt for the Wilderpeople in this whimsical adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s science fiction novel.
KLARA AND THE SUN
★★★ of ★★★★★ stars
There’s been a bit of a backlash towards Taika Waititi amonst film fans since the release of Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder. While known primarily for offbeat and quirky films like What We Do In The Shadows and Jojo Rabbit, many film fans felt this was a bit of a gimmick that was getting repetitive, especially in making a character like Thor a comedic oaf of sorts. Since then, Waititi has worked on smaller films like 2023’s Next Goal Wins and follows that up here with Klara and the Sun, an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 science fiction novel, Klara and The Sun. Waititi’s adaptation is a return to form channeling his beloved 2016 film Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Klara and the Sun stars Jenna Ortega as Klara, a precocious B1 model Artificial Friend. Klara is an older outmoded model, shelved primarily for her overly developed sense of empathy. She is struggling to be sold and is close to being melted down for parts due to her long in the tooth nature. Her Store Manager, played by Natasha Lyonne, puts her in the store’s display window as a last play to be sold. Here, she encounters Josie, (played by Mia Tharia) bonds with her as they mirror each other in the window. Their connection is shattered by a monsterous street cleaning machine called Cootings, which Klara believes is evil due to its ability to block the sun, with whom Klara has a connection due to her solar powered battery and her belief that it is a sentient god-like being. Fortunately for Klara, Josie returns with her mother, Chrissy (Amy Adams), and she purchases Klara despite Chrissy’s reluctance to buy an outmoded model. We learn that Josie has been “lifted” – a chromosomal surgery that gives her an adept ability to excel at anything she puts her mind to. This surgery separates humanity into a caste system, where only lifted individuals really have a chance to succeed in life, even if you’re smart and talented but not lifted like Josie’s boyfriend Rick (Aran Murphy). Things seem to be going well for Josie’s future, until we learn that for many the surgery to become lifted doesn’t work and you are slowly dying, which is Josie’s case. Chrissy knows this and is having issues dealing with it, being distant and spending an inordinate amount of time getting an elaborate portrait made of Josie by her friend Capaldi (Steve Buscemi) and only accepting Klara once she learns she cam mimic a happy and healthy Josie that she doesn;t get to see directly. Klara struggles with Josie’s condition and ponders whether the sun can help heal her as a divine being and how can she help to do.
That’s the basic jist of the story of the film. Beat-wise, it’s similar to Hunt for the Wilderpeople in Klara being a fish out of water on a farm and trying to find herself and help Josie grow beyond what she knew when she met her. Ishiguro also wrote Never Let Me Go, which was made into a film by Mark Romanek. That film dealt with a dystopian future where clones are grown to donate organs and parts to their human hosts without them knowing the truth and Klara and the Sun shares some DNA with that cloning drama. But Ortega’s performance as Klara really gets you invested here so you aren’t fixated too much on the long game in the plot and are invested in her and Josie’s relationship. Tharia plays a compelling Josie, one whose struggle to make friends is palpable and Aran Murphy’s Rick has great chemistry with both Ortega and Tharia. Ortega’s Klara is bubbly and naive, but she needs to eb when we meet her because there’s a lot of heaviness in her character journey and she executes that well. The film’s final act is both fulfilling and sad with lots of twists that unfurl naturally. The film is paced well and reminds this viewer of Waititi’s earl;y character driven films and it made me tear up with the examination of the human condition and what it is that makes us unique and human.
Klara and the Sun opens in theaters from 20th Century Studios/ Searchlight on October 23rd.