Director: Taika Waititi
Starring: Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams, Mia Tharia, Aran Murphy, Steve Buscemi, Natasha Lyonne
Certificate: 12A
Run Time: 116 mins
Klara and the Sun marks a change for Kiwi director Taika Waititi in that this is the first serious film he’s made. Having made a name for himself with his excellent comedies, such as Hunt For The Wilderpeople, What We Do In The Shadows and Jojo Rabbit, here Waititi adapts Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian science fiction 2021 novel about an android called Klara (Jenna Ortega). Klara is an AF (Artificial Friend), companions for children because socialisation is more limited, thanks to on-screen schooling. The film opens with Klara and her fellow AFs at ‘The Friend Store’, who are ignored in favour of B-3 models (they are of the older B-1 variety). But Klara is bought by a young girl named Josie (Mia Tharia), despite her mother Chrissie’s (Amy Adams) reluctance. Josie lives in a rural home near a wheat farm, without many friends except Rick (Aran Murphy), and it’s safe to say that neither Chrissie or Melania (Rachel House), the family’s housekeeper, take to Klara straightaway.
While it’s far from a complete disaster, Klara and the Sun is all over the place. Having not read the book, but being familiar with other Kazuo Ishiguro film adaptations such as Never Let Me Go, Waititi’s humour clashes with Ishiguro’s existential themes and it never quite finds an appropriate tone. To start, Waititi fails to make much of the post-Third World War context and he glosses over the numerous sub-threads that the film introduces. There’s also various quips, befitting of the director’s back catalogue, but few of them land and a lot of the jokes feel unnecessary because of the heavy material. The film constantly feels like it’s pulling in different directions, and while it occasionally takes flight or begins to becomes profound, it’s then undone by a joke that doesn’t deliver or a new sub-plot – Waititi hasn’t worked out how to pace this story.
Still, Jenna Ortega is brilliant as Klara, nailing the innocence and curiosity of the child-like robot with a convincing robotic physicality. Mia Tharia is also excellent as Josie, who we soon learn why she flits between being overly energetic and warm to cold and depressed. Waititi regular Rachel House is also another highlight, and she’s the main reason why some of the jokes land. Amy Adams is fine as the stoic and calculated mother and Steve Buscemi is rather subdued in a brief appearance. The film’s also nicely shot by Mike Berlucchi, who deftly conveys the world as a colourful marvel that we’re seeing unfold from Klara’s perspective, with the idyllic rural home setting with its vast wheat fields akin to The Wizard of Oz‘s Yellow Brick Road.
It’s a shame Klara and the Sun doesn’t fully work, but I’d say it’s just about a serviceable film. I don’t think Waititi was a good match for this material and he fails to explore its themes deeply enough or have the necessary care to certain narrative elements. This is comfortably the director’s weakest effort to date, but it’s not the total trainwreck many are making it out to be.
