After Yang is a breath-taking film of clones and androids, loss and memory, culture and family, all held together by a stunning visual style; you might say it’s a sci-fi mystery turned inside out. Despite its painful beauty, the movie was written and directed by Kogonada based on Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang” which is set in an unknown number of decades (centuries?) from now in an everyday future where adopted children often have artificially intelligent older siblings. When his parents, Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Jake (Colin Farrell), notice that their older son has gone beyond repair, they find that he may be more than just another regular “Technobeing”. As Jake, who always seeks aloofness learns about some secrets about Yang which are not less beautiful for him to remain unaffected as a father, husband or human being.
The world of tomorrow Kogonada constructs with Arjun Bhasin and Alexandra Schaller designing the costumes and sets respectively is tranquil with different Chinese-Japanese-East Asian designs woven into it. Rather than dystopian pan-Asian influence prevalent in most western science fiction films like Blade Runner, its inverted cyberpunk if anything at all; not so much a utopia but one that has shimmering buildings in the far distance. The music composed by Aska Matsumiya (plus one theme from the legendary Ryuichu Sakamoto) is sweetly melancholic. They both wear comfy Japanese kimonos while Jake also owns a Chinese tea shop. Eventually adopting her from China makes their daughter Chinese born whose cultural heritage they try to enhance by buying Yang second-hand (“certified refurbished,” adds Jake) few years ago to inform her some fun facts about China as well as keep her company from time to time when she feels lonely as their child. They’re a happy family but according to the opening credits synchronized dance competition, which is a riot of color among other families with androids and seemingly clones, they are also just like any other family even though their daily interactions sometimes seem to be on auto-pilot.
George (Clifton Collins Jr.), Jake’s overbearing neighbor advises him to a conspiracy-obsessed repairman known as Russ (Ritchie Coster) when Yang breaks down since he is out of warranty. With this, Jake realizes that his son who knows everything about culture might have been installed with some sort of malevolent spyware. However, because Yang had the capacity to learn, his recordings turned out to be more complex and much selective than mere metadata harvesting. It was impossible for Technosapiens like her to record memories so says Cleo (Sarita Choudhury), who works at a museum specializing in artificial beings’ marvels. When Jake starts watching these memories replayed back via short video files accessed by means of slick VR glasses it reveals an entirely different world for the quiet tea merchant, and new knowledge about what, or rather who he really lost.
Most of the movie is presented by Kogonada and Benjamin Loeb, the cinematographer with a calculated inertia. A carefully composed 2:35:1 frame captures the family in slow moving wide and medium shots reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu (whose regular co-writer Noda Kōgo was the reason for Kogonada’s pen name). These scenes that have not much else than interior household setting are mostly located at their kitchen and different spaces around their warmly lit modernist home – sometimes drab looking through dampened flat digital quality; other times slightly colored but bright images that seem welcoming on the surface, somehow. Their house is fine except for some arguments once in a while. However, it is only when they start realizing how beautiful they look did they notice something has been changing distance wise between them.
Every time it shows Yang’s remembrances filmed from his point of view, film’s palette changes dramatically. Often enough he directs his eye to where sunlight casts its rays and shades create shapes against food and nature just like a photographer who tries to capture silent music of the world. The aspect ratio becomes a full-frame 16:9 as it widens vertically. The colours become deeper and richer. They jut out as if taken with film cameras yet all these were shot using digital Alexa Mini camera throughout production. Nonetheless, this effort to make something tangible extends to even mimicking film faults such as graininess which give Yang’s memories an organic feel that makes one believe they are both alive and imperfect copies of people who exist only on celluloid. Perhaps there isn’t so much difference between digital and analogue media since both can achieve comparable artistic expressions or perhaps this holds true for genuine and artificial creatures alike.
Yang’s perspective makes Jake see himself, his family more clearly – even literally at times because the filmmaker adopts close-ups on old conversations when Yang takes over his vision. While filming these memories, however, Kogonada and Loeb also seek a hand-held feel and an impression of vitality and randomness. A feeling of excitement that Jake has long lost.
Gradually, their own flashbacks concerning Yang change the absence of movement they had from which to view the world. Their own memories start to resemble Yang’s quick poetic flashes that are now all he left behind in their minds when they think about what happened. After some time even before the death of Yang Farrell and Turner-Smith began showing sadness in their behavior that is beginning to morph into something more complicated emotionally; something much fuller because they have started recognizing human subtleties hitherto unseen. His brief clips form ethereal documentarist montages filled with glimpses of nature as they are played back one after another. The only thing, which further questions whether Yang had any other relationships besides them, was looking through his memories for an unfamiliar girl (Haley Lu Richardson).
Kogonada borrows from memory documentaries in constructing his visuals, and also while crafting his intricate screenplay. Jake often recalls an old film he watched (Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht’s All in This Tea), in which a German man whose name he can’t remember — sadly, in this future, Werner Herzog has slipped from memory, though Farrell does a worthy impression! — who extolls the virtues of tea as an herb whose taste has the power to conjure a distinct time and place. However, Jake is dismayed that he himself doesn’t share this relationship to the drink that consumes his work and keeps him away from his family. Though while playing back Yang’s memories, he notices details he previously missed, like the way Yang had expressed similar feelings and wishes about tea. As much as Jake regrets losing an expensive machine, he also begins to mourn the person he never truly got to know — someone whose incompleteness wasn’t all that different from his own.
Yang Min asks questions with wide open eyes about everything – even when they are factual statements. Kogonada edited it, too; therefore there are different memories presented twice – first as recorded by Yang then recollected by either Jake or Kyra – where each performance slightly changes with time but still retains Min speaking dully at one moment and softly comforting at another. The question of how human Yang was may not be central to the plot (which mostly concerns Jake trying to track down the girl from his memories, and learn why he may have been drawn to her), but it invades each conversation thanks to the way Min’s eyes seem silently asking it every turn of their heads. He brings a radiant kindness to Yang especially in his playful scenes with Mika – they lovingly refer one another using Chinese honorifics such as “mei mei” (younger sister) and “gege” (older brother) – but the broader question of his humanity also leads to other remaining perplexities, like what it means for an artificial creation to be Chinese, or Asian, or bear the sole responsibility for cultural authenticity in Mika’s life. As much as the film is about probing Yang’s personal memories, it’s just as much about his lack of cultural memory as well, something he longs for, and wishes he possessed in a form more real than geographical trivia.
Well, the movie barely poses such questions outright. Instead, we are pulled in by its stunning visuals, we are allowed to decode it right alongside Jake and Kyra who start off with dull surroundings that become colorful anytime they enter Yang’s left over thoughts as a form of mourning. The interface for each memory is moreover cleverly devised; its layout signifies gleaming night stars and these bright points placed on invisible lines stretching every direction. The arrangement brings to mind diagrams and illustrations of the early expansion of space-time after the Big Bang —those beginning moments (after all, Yang refers to light). Every time this couple chooses another memory, there is always something new that they learn about the way Yang looked at things or how he thought about things when he saw those images. Did he fear death? Like his family might have missed him or loved ones’ departed souls did?The fact that someone loved you and then passed away, it is actually like knowing the secrets behind creation itself in After Yang.
It is a story told using texture primarily through texture and cinematic aesthetics where finding meaning behind pictures becomes an interactive process between human beings but on one side it feels like discovering more about yourself and your place in the world as android Yang tries to understand why he exists. This is science fiction at its most poignant and emotional.A gripping tale where life has been given before passing takes images objects people mean what they do mean.
Judgment
A stunning sci-fi mystery set in a future world filled with beautiful memories of an android lover lost by death titled After Yang stands as a beautiful heartbreaking film about an indifferent couple (Colin Farell and Jodie-Turner Smith) unraveling the secret life of their artificial son (Justin H.Min). Through solemn performances and an eye for natural beauty Kogonada’s second feature film glows with past masters creating a moving future too.
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