Klara and the Sun
Dir: Taika Watiti. Comp: Michael Giacchino.
Klara and the Sun is adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's novel of the same name. It follows Klara (an artificial friend or 'AF') and the girl she is a companion too (Josie) as they navigate friendship, family, illness and the dystopian world in which they live. Giacchino wrote the soundtrack, focusing on minimalism, innocence and most of all, the future.
Giacchino's score is immediately the standout element to this film - whilst the visuals and filming is also excellent. The heavily synthesised score and choral 'Klara's Theme' create a sense of wonder and futurism. Giacchino uses musical techniques we are used to seeing in wholesome TV adverts, children's media or Christmas movies, like arpeggiaic piano movement, harp glissandos and a female choir using rounded vocable sounds. The score seems to paint utopia rather than dystopia - as Klara's childlike brain begins her journey outside the shop. Giacchino's motifs are simple and repetitive, really leaning into the minimalism trend of current instrumental music. They are usually descending themes, nostalgic and also indicative that we are going to experience darker events later on.
As we progress into the dystopic events of the film the music maintains its synthetic instrumentation, but adds percussive elements and transposes into minor keys - notably our choir either diminishes completly or rises in anger in these moments. He uses Chopin's Nocturne No.20 to simultaneously add a sense of familiarity for the audience, and deliver a tragic mood to key emotional moments. Giacchino chooses to embellish motifs that we have already heard, reharmonising them with minor keys and revealing the duality of Klara's artificial life: her real friendship with Josie, and her contradicting purpose of acting as Josie's replacement in the event of her death.
Giacchino totally moves away from traditional orchestral instrumentation and leans into electronic music, fitting for a futuristic setting. It has similarities to the Minecraft (game) score - which may be read by some as a criticism but I mean it as a compliment - both share twinkly high tessitura instruments, musically 'empty' space, and gentle, diatonic, hypnotic motifs. That innocent, unsurprising tone works really well for this film, whilst the finished product may not be what critics envisioned when reading the novel, the film and its score mainly works in tandem to present a child (or child-adjacent) view of a dystopian society.
