Twinkle, twinkle little star
Low-budget Clara a gem that reaches for the sky and shines with humanity
Clara is that rare specimen of science-fiction in which the fiction doesn’t overwhelm the science. If you don’t come away with a new appreciation for orbital planet-hunting telescopes, you’re watching it wrong.
Same goes if you aren’t caught up in its wounded central characters, a disillusioned astronomer and his wanderlusty assistant.
Patrick J. Adams stars as Isaac, a man with a tragic-relationship
backstory, and a new love named TESS.
That’s the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched earlier this year and already adding to the tally of almost 4,000 known planets outside our system. When Isaac advertises for a lab assistant, the only applicant is Clara (Troian Bellisario), who has no skills but a keen mind and boundless curiosity.
With her talismanic collection of stones from every continent, Clara isn’t your typical would-be scientist. But her lack of knowledge allows writer-director Akash Sherman to educate us through her, as Isaac teaches her how the light from the stars can be analyzed to find planets, and maybe even life. Of course, along the way they start to develop feelings for one another.
Shot in Toronto, Clara makes the most of its shoestring budget, with Sherman helping out on visual effects to produce some eye-catching imagery. His image of an aircraft shadow is not only a beautiful alternative to the hackneyed plane-landing shot, but a clever callback to the technique for spotting planets. And I loved the blink-and-miss-it shot of a sign reading: “Toronto Planetarium Grand Re-opening.” Here’s hoping someone at Queen’s Park gets an idea from this.
In the end, Clara is both an excellent bit of science-inflected storytelling and a nicely crafted romantic drama. It’s said that humans are set apart from the rest of Earth’s species by scientific curiosity and the need to tell stories as a form of social bonding. This film recognizes and gives voice to both these impulses.
It’s a superbly human film.