Started out as another scientist-in-love trope but gradually moved into something far more. While the film's subject was about exoplanet detection it neither talked down to you nor burdened you with arcana. (If you saw "Lucy" you'll recall how tiresome Morgan Freeman's incessant narrative was - this had none of that.)

I wasn't familiar with the actors. Troian Bellisario was a joy to watch in a nuanced role. I thought Patrick Adams overdid the intensity of the driven scientist but as counterpoint to Clara, it worked well.

The plot was beautiful. By the movie's end I was completely invested in the characters and story line.

So as not to waste your time... If you thought Contact was too fast-moving... If you thought The Man from Earth had too much tense conflict and action... Then this is the film for you.

And if you love your science fiction to be about real scientists doing real science... Then this is DEFINITELY the film for you.

It is SLOW. If that's going to be a problem for you, move along now. Slower than Contact. Slower than Europa Report. Real science is not fast-paced.

And while it's dramatic, there's close to zero conflict between characters. Astronomer Isaac Bruno occasionally oversteps his bounds and gets chastised by superiors who can ruin his career. Isaac and assistant Clara occasionally argue over the nature of reality and belief. Those are the limits of inter-character conflict in the film. Other conflict falls under the headings of Man vs. Fate and Man vs. the Unknown.

So if you're looking for chase scenes and laser battles, you're completely in the wrong place. Go watch The Mandalorian.

But if you want to see broken characters devoting themselves to a scientific search and exploring the reasons that drive them, this is your film. If you want to actually learn how the search for exoplanets is done (in part), this is your film. Isaac teaches Clara techniques that we learned in astronomy lab; and he teaches her well enough that the viewer learns, too, and can follow along as the team discovers potential new planets.

Around this search is woven a story of two broken people, broken in ways that we learn slowly as they get to know each other. Isaac in particular gets kicked around hard. (Not that Clara gets off easily, far from it.)

The only thing that disturbed me is that Clara brought an element of pseudoscientific woowoo, AND she talked Isaac into following it, AND it actually worked. That's one of the many, many sins that doomed Interstellar (one of the most disappointing films of this millennium). It doesn't doom this film, but it's risky. They could've closed the loop in the final scene and made sense out of the woowoo. Instead they edged up to it but left it intentionally ambiguous. The fact that it's ambiguous leaves open the possibility of woowoo.

Again, if you want space opera or science fantasy, this film is barely even science fiction. It's more like fiction about scientists who make a momentous discovery. That discovery is what crosses the line into science fiction; but without that it's just a drama about the world of astronomy.

I enjoyed it. I'll watch it again. But it's only for those who like idea stories and don't need action and conflict. If science doesn't excite you, this film won't either.

Why use science to scan for life on other planets, when we can channel our inner visions and just finger a spot on the map? Why go to college, when you can be a mystic and then teach scientists how to do their jobs?

I have nothing against mystics, and I am fairly spiritual myself. But when we turn our backs on the scientific method, when we pretend it's just a bunch of opinions, when we sail off into the fantasy world of facts and alternative facts... We denigrate our progress as a species.

We spend our lives adrift, but we hardly notice being lost. Instead, we set our sights on the furthest star, and we throw ourselves against the wall because we have to believe that something better waits on the other side. Or maybe it is all random, and we are nothing but particles, dust. Our lives ebb and flow in so many alternate ways, and loss cuts us deep. And we’re disconnected, never realizing that the strangers who find us are leading the way back to shore. Their stories are fragments, little rocks to fall into the holes that have eaten away at us, and their foundation builds us back up and returns our hope. And we regain our footing, only to slip once more across the jagged edge of tragedy, but instead of falling do we cling to their words, their vision. And we see what they see, and no longer are we adrift but anchored to them. And we move forward, throwing the past to the waves and saying good-bye, never expecting an answer back, but somewhere in the distance, the universe is playing our song. The violin is resting against the strings of the movie, Clara, and we are still reaching for the stars.

Spoiler!

Okay, so the script writer really knows graduate and post doc culture well and gets it right, however the moral of the story is that there's more to knowledge than science. I agree, but I'm not sure that it's the romantic spirituality that is the gist of this movie. I don't buy the spirituality this movie is selling. Yes, there is more to the universe than we can understand and comprehend, but there's not much more to this than new wave religion. I think the universe and life are fine of and in of themselves without a romantic interpretation. Which made this movie kind of annoying to have watched in its entirety.

This was a rarity--a romance that also was arguably hard SF. I don't recall who said it but it has been said that science fiction is allowed one whopper per story. The whopper in this one is that quantum entanglement can be used for communication. Think about that, and listen to the dialog, and what's going on becomes something to wonder about rather than something to dismiss as "spirituality".

This is what real science fiction is. it’s not swashbuckling around the galaxy with a half dozen alien friends. That’s just fantasy. If you want to know a possible way first contact will occur then watch Clara. Things are left unexplained but enough light is shed that you partake in the greatest discovery in history with the main characters. It gets a little slow but this is a cerebral film. Relax and let it tell you a story.

Many times I think the male-female relationship aspect of a movie gets in the way of a good science fiction yarn. But in this case, in addition to serving as a vehicle for the scientist to explain the science to, it works well in the story. The character development is good, as is the acting. You develop genuine feelings for the characters as the movie progresses.

My expectations for this movie were not high, but I was pleasantly surprised by a well-made film. I highly recommend.