Clara is a 2018 Canadian-British science fiction film and the second feature film directed by Akash Sherman. The film stars husband and wife performers Patrick J. Adams and Troian Bellisario, playing astrophysicist Isaac and itinerant artist Clara, who become close while searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe.
The film received mixed reviews from critics.
Plot
Dr. Isaac Bruno holds a postdoctoral research fellowship in astrophysics at (fictional) Ontario University, in Toronto. His goal of finding signs of intelligent life in the universe has become an obsession, linked to an unspecified trauma in his personal life two years earlier. He has become increasingly antagonistic towards his students and has taken to misappropriating time on ground-based telescopes in Chile, intended for a colleague's research. His department head suspends him, denying him any access to the school's research facilities.
The TESS orbiting telescope is launched, providing enormous amounts of data that is shared with the world, in a community effort to analyze and find possible life on exoplanets. Isaac posts flyers looking for an unpaid research assistant, offering nothing but room and board. His only response is from Clara, an uneducated artist who has lived a Bohemian lifestyle. Clara has her own secrets, seen taking some type of medicine for an unspecified illness.
Isaac focuses on results from M dwarf stars, believing it to be a niche that no one else will bother with. When Clara finds a promising exoplanet, Isaac sneaks into the university in the night and lies to the telescope operators in Chile, claiming to have permission from his friend Charlie (Ennis Esmer), to get more data on the planet.
Charlie is furious, but also intrigued by the data results. He advises Isaac to contact Rebecca, Isaac's ex-wife, who holds an endowed chair at Caltech. Clara convinces Isaac to contact Rebecca, despite his reluctance. The upheaval in their lives is finally revealed, when Rebecca tells Isaac that finding life will not bring back their dead baby son. She gets him some time on the Keck telescope. This results in proving that they have found a habitable planet candidate.
Clara is falling in love with Isaac, but he has become jaded about love or anything else that cannot be scientifically proven. She kisses him, then abruptly backs off when he starts to respond. After Charlie's wife delivers a baby at the hospital, Isaac muses dejectedly that the entire universe is a "cosmic accident" based on luck, with one minuscule variation being able to alter existence of an atom, a planet, or indeed his own son. Clara reminds him that those same changes did result in the universe going the way it went and in his son existing at all - and that the atoms making up his son's body aren't gone, but have only changed. After that Isaac and Clara finally become a couple.
When they learn that someone else discovered "their" planet a week before them, Isaac becomes initially despondent, but then decides to focus on detecting signs of an evolved civilisation affecting its environment as evidence of existence of an advanced species, rather than finding just a potentially habitable planet. In his obsession, he is blind to Clara's declining health, until Charlie chastises him. When Isaac tells Clara it is time for him to stop his search, she makes him set up a virtual map of the universe from the released batches of TESS data and then pick a star, trusting to his inner connection to the universe instead of focusing on data. Isaac picks a spot on the map not covered by the available data; in his anger and frustration he accuses Clara of planning to leave him and never intending to make their relationship permanent. Deeply upset and offended, Clara grabs her bag to leave - and collapses.
At the hospital, it is revealed that Clara has an autoimmune disease that has been causing the breakdown of internal organs and muscle wasting in her body; the doctor is surprised that in her condition she can walk or even talk. Isaac stays at her bedside until there's a sudden deterioration in her state. Moments before she dies, she tells him: "I wish I could see your face when you see it."
When a new batch of TESS data is released, Isaac finds that the spot he picked previously on the map of the universe is now covered by the data, with the celestial object at that location exhibiting anomalies in its coincident orbit around an exoplanet - proof of that object being artificial and its orbit being intentionally maintained. He takes his findings to Charlie, who introduces him to Dr. Rickman, head of the TESS project. Two years later, at a press conference at the JPL, Dr. Rickman, Rebecca and Charlie explain that the data gathered now conclusively proves the existence of the artificial object, orbiting a star 200 light years distant, in turn proving the existence of intelligent alien life. Isaac is not in his assigned seat on the panel, choosing instead to spend time reminiscing about Clara.
A few months later, Rebecca summons Isaac to the SETI laboratory. She reveals that the aliens have sent a message "Isaac Bruno" in Morse code. He is present when the next message arrives - an audio file of a Bob Dylan song that he and Clara listened to together. The film ends with Isaac smiling through his tears and saying "Thank you."
Victor Stiff summarizes Clara's main themes, which are "life's big questions": the nature of existence, human purpose, and "our need to connect with others."[1] The film asks us to consider the infinite, "but not before looking inward."[1]
"Are we alone?": existential longing
Clara is most simply described as a story about "space and love":[2] space, in the sense of "this search for life among the stars" (the title itself was chosen because it means "clear" and "bright," like a star),[3] and love as it relates to bereavement: "As I was writing this film, I went through a very personal loss. I lost my grandfather."[4]
"We are not alone": science and spirituality
Sherman approaches the idea of life beyond Earth from both a scientific perspective from "a place of spirituality" in thinking that "there might be something out there... we're not alone", and, in an interview, he references Neil deGrasse Tyson looking up at the sky and "feeling a type of connectivity that's almost spiritual."[4]
Genre
Sherman calls the film a "high concept" science fiction drama.[3] He does not consider it a romance, but anticipated it would be marketed that way "because the lead actors are married in real life"; it is a love story to the extent that there is "a binding bond between two characters" who are "just two people connecting for a bit."[2] Jim Slotek disagrees: "Sherman's objections notwithstanding, Clara is a romance, albeit an interrupted one — kind of what you'd get if you crossed Carl Sagan's Contact with Erich Segal's Love Story."[2]
Production
Background
At age 18, Sherman competed in the CineCoup Film Accelerator at the Banff World Media Festival, where he won second place and attracted the attention of producer Ari Lantos.[5] Lantos immediately recognized a "visionary talent he needed to support".[6]
Sherman studied at Ryerson University's film school for one year, where one day, at 19, he became determined to write a story, shutting himself in his dormitory room for seven hours.[2]
Friends Sherman made at Ryerson worked with him on his debut, The Rocket List, "made on no budget ... on a four-day road trip with a camera,"[5] as well as on Clara.[2] Together with James Ewasiuk, a "close collaborator" who co-wrote The Rocket List with him, Sherman did four months of research on "the Kepler telescope and transits and things like that."[2] Two years after they had met in Banff, Sherman ran into Lantos while pitching the draft script to Serendipity Point Films, from whom he received an option agreement the next day.[5]
Both leads also contributed ideas. Patrick Adams was involved with the project from an early stage, giving feedback to Sherman on his script, on character in particular, which the director began revising in earnest at age 20 and finished two years later.[7] Troian Bellisario provided "a similar depth for her character," and suggested a different ending for the film, a note which Sherman accepted: "I had a different ending in mind, which I don't want to share because it's not as good."[7] It was Bellisario who brought up quantum entanglement for one of the earlier drafts.[2]
Characterization
The character Isaac in the film is dealing with a loss so deep that he is "giving up on the universe". Adams pushed Sherman to allow him and Bellisario to explore that loss "to its limits": "Akash had done such a good job of setting the framework in the initial script I had read, but then the depths of how far these characters had gone and could go wasn't quite there yet... you've built this. Let's get in there and go deep. We discussed some of the ways and how deep that could go and how bad it could get."[4]
Realism and consultation with scientists
The project relied on three scientific advisors, Canadian astrophysicists John Moores and Doug Welch,[3] at York and McMaster universities respectively, and Barth Netterfeld of the University of Toronto.[2] Sherman and producer Ari Santos sent out an e-mail to Toronto-area physics and astronomy departments asking for help. Welch responded because there was so much "real science" in Sherman's script.[3] During preproduction Welch spent time with Sherman, Adams, and Bellisario, explaining such concepts as the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation in relation to the mechanics of astronomical observing, and later also suggested some dialogue exchanges.[3] According to Sherman, almost everything was vetted by the three consultants. "It's so vetted, in fact, that the climactic discovery in the movie... turned out to be an original idea", later published by the American Astronomical Society.[2]
Financing
Clara was produced by Serendipity Point in association with London-based Distant Horizon, with the support of Telefilm Canada, the Ontario Media Development Corporation (Ontario Creates), the CBC, and Bell Media's TMN.[5][8]
Filming
Principal photography took place in Toronto and surrounding areas during the month of March in 2017.[8] Leads Adams and Bellisario were married a little earlier,[7] and spent a large portion of their honeymoon working on the film.[9]
Locations
Locations included Sherman's alma mater Ryerson and the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto for several NASA scenes, because of their "spectacular buildings".[10] There are also outdoor scenes shot near Sugar Beach, while a shot of the exterior of the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto was not included in the final cut of the theatrical release.[10]
Visual effects and scientific accuracy
TESS with technicians, prior to its April 2018 launch
The detection method and the specialized telescopes depicted in Clara are not fictional. The TESS space telescope is a 2018 upgrade of the Kepler Telescope which was used to discover over 4000 exoplanets in the decade since 2009.[11] Sherman started his filmmaking career as a visual effects artist and film editor,[6] and all such VFX shots in the film were made by him rather than by his cinematographer, sourced from NASA: shots of planets transiting a sun come from the Solar Dynamics Observatory; shots of nebulae come from the Hubble Space Telescope: "I really wanted to show space honestly and in a way that would look familiar to people working in the field."[3]
Music
Composer Jonathan Kawchuk wrote a "soft score", complementing musical selections by Bob Dylan.[11] Kawchuk converted sounds from NASA's Voyager spacecraft into a synthesizer, sounds which were "baked into a lot of the tracks."[3]
Marketing and related works
Lantos said that Clara was aimed at teenagers and women in their twenties, and science fiction fans in general.[5] The film's trailer was uploaded to YouTube on 3 August 2018.[12] Sherman gave a talk in advance of the film's premiere on the science behind the film at the Astronomy On Tap event in Toronto on 17 August 2018.[13]
Isaac and Clara's use of publicly available data from NASA's TESS led to a "Clara-inspired academic paper" written by Welch and Moores and published in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.[3] The article, titled "Simulating Transits at the L1 Point", shares credit with Sherman.[2] Welch describes the relevant part of the film and the published paper:
Near the end, when the characters are going over graphs of a star's light dimming from a transiting planet, there is a nice lump on the graph that draws the eye—an object or artifact that becomes a very important plot point. Well, John Moores and I had figured out how such an object would appear in actual data, and that's part of what we ended up submitting as a paper. During the time we were developing this there was someone else, the astrophysicist Eric Gaidos, who also wrote a paper of a similar nature showing that our description was correct.[2]
D Films was responsible for Clara's Canadian theatrical distribution, while the CBC holds the television broadcast rights, and TMN holds the pay TV rights.[8] In February 2019, the United States film rights were acquired by Screen Media Films for a limited theatrical release in May, in a deal negotiated with SVP Worldwide Acquisitions.[15]
Home media and streaming
Clara is available on DVD[16] from Screen Media Video[17] and Blu-ray.[18]
Clara has an approval rating of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 26 reviews.[20] On Metacritic, which uses a weighted score, the film has a score of 43 out of 100, based on six reviews.[21]
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Frank Scheck finds Clara dry and academic, slow moving, the dialogue full of platitudes, and feels there is no chemistry between the married leads.[22] Assigning the film 2 stars at RogerEbert.com, Peter Sobczynski called the film "peculiar and largely unsatisfying" despite the ambitions displayed by Akash Sherman: "the result is a weird muddle that's both too silly to be taken seriously and too staid to completely go off the beaten path."[23] Toronto critic Norman Wilner, writing for Now, though conceding the film has its moments, feels that the story stops where it ought to have begun.[24] Tara Thorne finds that Clara has "outsized ideas that dominate and weaken the film beneath it", lacking in humour but featuring too much "data talk", though it finally gains traction in the last twenty minutes, a "big reveal" that pays off but also sacrifices genuine emotions for "dutifully plotted emotional beats." Having said all this, Thorne calls Sherman an "assured director who clearly has big plans."[25]
Unlike Thorne, Don Shanahan finds the real life science as an "interwoven backdrop" provides a "narrative boon for the science fiction of Clara." Its "sense of intelligence intertwines with the unpredictability found in the amorous reverberations of the human heart", a combination which makes for an "intimate and daring film experience", a "rare treat" to have "two narrative genres combined with smarts and affection."[11] Writing for Exclaim!, Alex Hudson finds the science more intriguing than what he calls the film's philosophical musings, but, despite its flaws, it works as a mood piece: "the colours are muted, the score is appropriately ethereal, and it effectively captures Isaac's depression as he searches for meaning in his broken life. It gets under the skin even when it doesn't stimulate the mind."[26] Assigning the film 3.5 stars, Victor Stiff complains of the "glaring imbalance between the male and female lead characters", though the actors themselves "play well off each other" and, despite those issues, the film "comes through with a rousing conclusion that speaks to a longing we all feel as humans."[1]
Giving the film a B rating, Jim Slotek calls Clara a "solidly written" film with an impressive "level of sophistication in the storytelling", benefiting from NASA–provided photos and effects "cannily" used to give it "the look of a much higher budgeted movie".[2] Daniel Hart assigns the film 4.5 stars, calling it a "remarkable" and "thought-provoking" story with applaudable performances".[27]
Scientific response
Doug Welch responded to Sherman's original script because "it captures the excitement of revealing other planets and the potential for even identifying life elsewhere during our lifetime... it was clear to me that Akash understood a lot of the field and how it worked. You see this in small details, too, like ... using remote observations with a telescope in Chile."[3] The film's trailer, due both to "lush" visual effects and such "teasing science-savvy plot points" attracted a lot of attention on social media from astronomers.[3]
Accolades
Award
Austin Film Festival, 2018 • Jury Award for a Narrative Feature (Akash Sherman and James Ewasiuk)[28]
William Esco MoernerLahir24 Juni 1953 (umur 70)KaliforniaTempat tinggalAmerika SerikatKebangsaanAmericanAlmamaterWashington University, Cornell UniversityPenghargaanWolf Prize in Chemistry (2008)Irving Langmuir Award (2009)Peter Debye Award (2013) Hadiah Nobel Kimia (2014)Karier ilmiahBidangKimia, Fisika terapan, BiofisikaInstitusiStanford UniversityPembimbing doktoralAlbert J. Sievers III William Esco (W. E.) Moerner (lahir 24 Juni 1953) adalah seorang ahli kimia & biofisika dan pro...
У Вікіпедії є статті про інші значення цього терміна: Картушине (значення). село Картушине Країна Україна Область Луганська область Район Ровеньківський район Громада Ровеньківська міська громада Код КАТОТТГ UA44080030140049547 Основні дані Засноване 1780 Населення 951 Площа 1,53...
Портативная игровая система (портативная игровая приставка) — лёгкое, компактное, портативное электронное устройство, предназначенное для того, чтобы играть в видеоигры. От игровых приставок (игровых консолей) такие устройства отличаются компактностью и мобильност...
Koordinat: 5°09′25″S 119°30′22″E / 5.1570253°S 119.5060448°E / -5.1570253; 119.5060448 Moncongloe LapparaDesaPemandangan Kolam Regulasi Nipa-Nipa di Desa Moncongloe Lappara.Negara IndonesiaProvinsiSulawesi SelatanKabupatenMarosKecamatanMoncongloeKode pos90564[1]Kode Kemendagri73.09.13.2003 Luas9,73 km² tahun 2017Jumlah penduduk8.122 jiwa tahun 2017Kepadatan834,74 jiwa/km² tahun 2017Jumlah RT21Jumlah RW6 Moncongloe Lappara (Ejaan Van Ophuijsen...
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Chinese. (February 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or l...
Gaelic games club in County Tipperary, Ireland Thurles SarsfieldsNa Sáirséalaigh Dhurlais ÉileFounded:1883County:TipperaryNickname:The BluesColours:Blue and whiteGrounds:The Outside FieldCoordinates:52°40′56.52″N 7°49′22.79″W / 52.6823667°N 7.8229972°W / 52.6823667; -7.8229972Playing kits Home Kit Change Kit Senior Club Championships All Ireland Munsterchampions Tipperarychampions Hurling: - 1 36 Thurles Sarsfields is a Tipperary GAA club which is l...
1791 treaty between the U.S. and the Cherokees For other uses of Holston, see Holston (disambiguation). For the 1777 Treaty of Fort Henry, see Cherokee–American wars § Treaties of 1777. Statue representing the signing of the Treaty of the Holston in Downtown KnoxvilleThe Treaty of Holston (or Treaty of the Holston) was a treaty between the United States government and the Cherokee signed on July 2, 1791, and proclaimed on February 7, 1792. It was negotiated and signed by William Bloun...
For other places with the same name, see Anielin. Village in Greater Poland Voivodeship, PolandAnielinVillageAnielinCoordinates: 51°52′N 18°6′E / 51.867°N 18.100°E / 51.867; 18.100Country PolandVoivodeshipGreater PolandCountyKaliszGminaŻelazkówPopulation60 Anielin [aˈɲɛlin] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Żelazków, within Kalisz County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland.[1] It lies approximately 13 kilom...
Village in Northern Hungary, HungaryErkVillage (község) Coat of armsLocation of Heves County in HungaryErkLocation of Erk in HungaryCoordinates: 47°36′32″N 20°04′39″E / 47.60889°N 20.07750°E / 47.60889; 20.07750Country HungaryRegionNorthern HungaryCountyHeves CountySubregionHeves DistrictGovernment • MayorBéla Meleghegyi[1]Area • Total21.68 km2 (8.37 sq mi)Population (1 Jan. 2015) • Tot...
WSM and WSSM family of cartridges. From left to right: .223 WSSM, .243 WSSM, .25 WSSM, .270 WSM, 7 mm WSM, .300 WSM, .325 WSM. Winchester Super Short Magnum, or WSSM is a line of rebated bottlenecked centerfire short magnum cartridges introduced by the U.S. Repeating Arms Company (Winchester Inc).[1] It is a further development of the Winchester Short Magnum concept utilizing smaller bullets, but of a still higher velocity. History Winchester and Browning partnered to create a new sho...
Hindu community found in North India For the Muslim community, see Jogi Faqir. For a practitioner of yoga, see Yogi. For other uses, see Jogi (disambiguation). A yogi seated in a garden, North Indian or Deccani miniature painting, c.1620-40 The Jogi (also spelled Jugi or Yogi)[1][2] is a Hindu community found in North India. Jogi surname is associated with the ancient migrants of the southern Indian states Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala and Gujarat. They are...
هذه المقالة بحاجة لصندوق معلومات. فضلًا ساعد في تحسين هذه المقالة بإضافة صندوق معلومات مخصص إليها. جزء من سلسلة مقالات حولالأدب أشكال رئيسة رواية شعر دراما قصة قصيرة نثر حكاية خرافية حكاية رمزية رواية قصيرة قصة إطارية الأنواع دراما كوميديا شعر ملحمي أدب إيروتيكي شعر غنائي...
Constituency in SwitzerlandWahlkreis RheintalConstituencyCountry SwitzerlandCanton St. GallenArea • Total138.37 km2 (53.42 sq mi)Population (December 2020) • Total74,372 • Density540/km2 (1,400/sq mi)Time zoneUTC+1 (CET) • Summer (DST)UTC+2 (CEST)Municipalities13 The Wahlkreis Rheintal (English: Rhine Valley) is a constituency (Wahlkreis) of the canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland, formed under the new cons...
The Life First editionAuthorMalcolm KnoxCountryAustraliaLanguageEnglishPublisherAllen & Unwin, AustraliaPublication date2011Media typePrint (Paperback)Pages416ISBN978-1-74237-299-0OCLC716054977Preceded byJamaica The Life is a novel by the Australian author Malcolm Knox. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of a fictional world surfing champion Dennis Keith. The character of Dennis Keith was inspired by the life of the Australian surfer Michael Peterson.[1]...
2001 video game 2001 video gameThe NationsDeveloper(s)JoWooD ViennaPublisher(s)JoWooD ProductionsPlatform(s)WindowsReleaseJune 2001Genre(s)Real-time strategy The Nations (German: Die Völker 2: Aufstieg zum Königreich) is a real-time strategy video game developed and published by Austrian company JoWooD Productions for Microsoft Windows in 2001. It is a sequel to the 1999 game Alien Nations (German: Die Völker). Story Consistent with Alien Nations, The Nations features on three alien factio...
Canadian parliament, 1926–1930 16th Parliament of CanadaMinority parliament9 December 1926 – 30 May 1930Parliament leadersPrimeMinisterWilliam Lyon Mackenzie King25 September 1926 – 7 August 1930Cabinet14th Canadian MinistryLeader of theOppositionHugh Guthrie11 October 1926 – 11 October 1927Richard Bedford Bennett12 October 1927 – 6 August 1930Party caucusesGovernmentLiberal PartyOppositionConservative PartyCrossbenchProgressive PartyUnited Farmers of AlbertaLab...
Фрила́нсер (англ. freelancer, также свободный художник[1]) — свободный работник. Термин фрилансер обычно приписывается Вальтеру Скотту (используется в романе «Айвенго» (1819) для описания средневекового наёмного воина, букв. «вольного копейщика» (lance — рыцарское коп...
2007 studio album by REO SpeedwagonFind Your Own Way HomeStudio album by REO SpeedwagonReleasedApril 3, 2007Recorded2005-06StudioBlue Moon Studio, Agoura Hills, CAGenreRock, hard rockLength43:55LabelMailboatSpeedwagonProducerJoe Vannelli, Kevin CroninREO Speedwagon chronology Building the Bridge(1996) Find Your Own Way Home(2007) Not So Silent Night ... Christmas with REO Speedwagon(2009) Find Your Own Way Home is the fifteenth studio album by REO Speedwagon. It was produced by Joe Va...
Professional sports tournament organization Cyberathlete Professional LeagueSportElectronic sportsFoundedJune 27, 1997 (1997-06-27)Most recentchampion(s) X3O (CS) Team XFX (CSS)Most titles SK-Gaming (7 times)Official websitethecpl.com The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) was a professional sports tournament organization specializing in computer and console video game competitions. It was founded by Angel Munoz on June 27, 1997, in Dallas, Texas.[1] The CPL is cons...
.jpg)
.jpg)
