KLARA AND THE SUN Review: Woefully Uneven Adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Novel Disappoints

What a difference a decade makes.

 

For Taika Waititi, that decade included two well-received, attention-grabbing comedies, What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a Golden Ticket to Hollywood, and writing and directing Thor: Ragnarok, an unqualified critical and commercial success, and an Oscar for Best Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit.

 

Paradoxically, it’s at the proverbial heights of Waititi’s success that his fortunes — or at least his popularity with a certain contingent of terminally online cinephiles — turned for the worse. 

 

In hindsight, Jojo Rabbit and its trivialization of the Holocaust marked the end of Waititi’s exalted status as a filmmaker who could do practically no wrong. Waititi’s ability to mix-and-match otherwise disparate tones, his ability to mix physical comedy with dramatic heft and emotional poignancy, all within a studio system that’s repeatedly stripped indie filmmakers of their individuality, evaporated almost overnight.

 

Disappointment, Thor: Love & Thunder, followed disappointment, Next Goal Wins, and now, with his third film since his Oscar win, yet another disappointment, Klara and the Sun, a frustratingly uneven, unwieldy adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro's 2021 science-fiction novel.

 

Set in an under-defined dystopian future where World War III has come and gone, the Internet, considered one of the prime causes of the war, has been legally banned, and overbuilt cities choke on the exhaust from pollution-spewing street cleaners, Klara and the Sun centers on Klara (Jenna Ortega), a so-called “Artificial Friend,” a sentient, self-aware android programmed for long-term companionship. It’s a kind of idealized, Platonic love, a love without romantic attachment, but offering unlimited access to the artificial friend’s attention, admiration, and adoration.

 

As a B-1, an unsold, unwanted, obsolete android, Klara risks permanent disassembly, scrapped for parts and reused to build another, presumably “better” android. Every morning, however, Klara earnestly prays to an objectified, deified sun for sustenance, guidance, and wish-fulfillment. That day, though, hasn’t come for Klara or her fellow androids at “The Friend Store,” and their obvious obsolescence, highlighted by the latest models, B-3s, sold across the street, all the more unlikely. 

 

Salvation arrives for Klara, if not for the other androids, through the smog-filled city haze in the form of Josie (Mia Tharia), a precocious 14-year-old, and her mother, Chrissie (Amy Adams). While a hesitant Chrissie haggles, first with Josie, then with the Store Manager (Natasha Lyonne), Klara stands by, hoping for the best (sold into a supposedly benign form of chattel slavery), but also prepared for the worst (the robot scrapyard). 

 

Klara gets her wish, of course, but she gets more than she expected. She enters an isolated, mansion-sized home occupied by Chrissie, Josie, and an openly resentful housekeeper, Melania (Rachel House). After a family tragedy, Josie’s father abandoned their family. Chrissie, an interior designer to the city’s elite, threw herself into her work, leaving Josie, home-schooled and more recently, “Lifted” (genetically altered into super-genius status), both alone and lonely. 

 

Chrissie’s decision to “lift” Josie, meant to give her daughter every opportunity for success presumably in a future defined by haves and have-nots (i.e., a ruling class and the ruled), came with distinct side effects, including, but not limited to, bouts of lightheadedness, fatigue, and occasional nosebleeds. Even worse, being “lifted” has compromised Josie’s immune system, threatening not just her immediate future, but her life as well. 

 

As Klara navigates the household’s thorny relationships, unwanted by both Chrissie and Melania (at least at first), befriending Josie, and learning about the world beyond what she’s read or heard, but never experienced directly, she also remains terminally fixated on the “Sun” as the equivalent of her god, a benevolent god capable of granting wishes, including a wish for Josie’s recovery that neither time nor advanced science might be able to provide.

 

Klara’s base-level programming allows her to learn and adapt, but never really grow emotionally, a narrative constraint that can work under the virtual pen of an award-winning, lyrically gifted novelist like Ishiguro, but not, alas, Waititi, a filmmaker limited by a two-hour running time, an altogether modest budget, and the commercially driven erasure of Ishiguro’s thematically rich, multi-layered exploration of the human — and non-human (AI) — condition. 

 

Waititi isn’t helped by indulging his worst impulses, undercutting dramatic moments with Marvel-style bits of physical comedy or slapdash verbal humor, and directing Ortega, an incredibly talented performer gifted with dramatic range and emotional depth, to give an over-broad performance. Everyone else in the cast acquits themselves well, including Aran Murphy as Rick, Josie’s next-door neighbor and romantic interest, and a late-arriving Steve Buscemi as Capaldi, a robotics guru with a specialization in bereavement models and an offer Chrissie seemingly can't refuse.