Jenna Ortega outshines the rest of Taika Waititi's cloying A.I. riff Klara And The Sun
The filmmaker's adaptation of an acclaimed novel isn't as cutesy as it seems at first, nor does it ever transcend that cuteness.
Photo: Sony
Beneath the praise for and/or criticism against Taika Waititi related to his irreverent sense of humor, supposed tweeness, and riffing on a “level that is frickin’ sublime,” what binds together most of the New Zealand filmmaker’s work is an ache over fractured, absent, or reconfigured parent-child relationships. The perspective shifts—whether it’s a foster child forced to bond with his new dad after his more affectionate new mother unexpectedly dies (Hunt For The Wilderpeople), a soccer coach struggling to cope with a loss bigger than any game (Next Goal Wins), or a young German boy learning the error of his childish Nazi beliefs through the death of his mother (the dreaded Jojo Rabbit), among others—but questions about personal loss and recovery hang over his work as much as that of his fellow deadpan and supposedly twee artist Wes Anderson. Even Waititi’s much-maligned second crack at Marvel’s Thor subseries, Love And Thunder, hinges on a villain motivated by a child’s cruel death and a hero further redeemed by his unexpected willingness to parent. It’s obviously a theme close to the man’s heart, and in Klara And The Sun, it is more than ever his maudlin undoing.
Klara And The Sun, adapted from the Kazuo Ishiguro novel by Waititi and co-writer Dahvi Waller, does have surprises in store, largely because it approaches its heartbreaking story like an entirely different sort of movie. Doubtless this first type—a whimsical, darkness-tinged sci-fi comedy—will annoy plenty of viewers off the bat, especially those combing through Waititi’s work with a cuteness detector and a grudge. But boy, is it difficult to resist the sunny expressiveness of Jenna Ortega as Klara, an Artificial Friend (“AF” for short) who longs for an owner to give her manufactured existence meaning. In this post-internet future (apparently it started World War III, after which our privileges were revoked), electronics-based simulations of friendship haven’t gone away; they’ve just moved over to astonishing lifelike robots, of which Klara is an older model. She waits restlessly at a low-rent store where the friendly if slightly brusque manager (Natasha Lyonne) struggles to compete with other outlets selling newer, sleeker AFs.
The market for these products is apparently entirely teenagers, who have become socially isolated in part because of access to “lifting,” a form of social-genetic engineering that supposedly enhances a child’s intelligence and abilities. This background information is conveyed unevenly; what is easy to imagine layered in with grace on the page becomes a logistical nightmare of what can be conveyed through the POV of Klara, self-described as having the sensibility of a toddler, to be shaped and matured by her hypothetical teenage owner. (It’s telling that the movie’s own logline-level explanation for Klara’s intelligence level neither bears much scrutiny as it relates to Ortega’s inviting performance nor makes much sense within the movie’s world.) Klara is overjoyed when that teenager appears to be Josie (Mia Tharia), who takes an immediate liking to this outdated AF despite the protestations of her fussy mother Chrissie (Amy Adams). Here is where Waititi’s pet theme comes into play, at least for the first time: Chrissie still reels from the death of her older daughter, who Josie remembers only faintly.
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