After Yang
At present, the world is in mourning on a grand scale. In the last two years people have died in such numbers that it has been impossible to ignore. But there is also grief for ways of life that have changed perhaps forever and for the divisions revealed by the pandemic. Kogonada’s “After Yang,” like all good science fiction, is about loss.
Based on the short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang” by Alexander Weinstein, it takes place in a future filled with technologies that do not yet exist and yet is one of the most present movies I’ve ever seen. So many visions of tomorrow feel remote or theoretical, but this one hits close to home by putting connection first. It’s a drama about being alive.
That future has a name: “techno sapiens.” Imagine Alexa as an android, a companion who can help around the house, learn new routines even tie your adopted child to her culture. That was Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra’s (Jodie Turner-Smith) hope when they bought Yang (Justin H. Min), more than just a babysitter for Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). He became part of their family. And then he broke.
Jake tells heartbroken Mika that he can find someone to fix him, but Jake bought him refurbished; the warranty expired and tracking down the original seller isn’t easy either. An underground parts dealer practically robs him before removing what she says is a memory bank from Yang’s head. The designers were experimenting with an ability for androids to record whatever few seconds at a time they deemed significant; Jake watches some of these memories, many of which play as montages like those from “The Tree of Life” a beautiful moment with Mika, something beautiful in nature, a sound bite, etcetera and they are devastating if you really think about what is happening here.
Imagine being able to see through the eyes and into the memories of someone you’ve lost: What did they think worth recording? What was important to them? How did they see themselves and you? As Jake works to save Yang, he realizes how little he knew about him, including a relationship with a girl named Ada (Haley Lu Richardson), who has a surprising story of her own.
There are flashbacks to Yang’s family life too. Kogonada plays with aspect ratio, using three to denote perspectives: in one key memory of Jake’s, Yang asks his owner father how he got into the tea business. Jake tells him he doesn’t even like the flavor but the experience the smell, the steeping, the process. Yang knows all there is to know about tea history, but he can’t be programmed with what really interests Jake about it.
And this tactile quality is something Kogonada expands upon throughout the film. It is a sci-fi movie that is interested in mother nature more than technology. “After Yang” has a texture and a smell that feels rare in any genre, but especially science fiction. I was reminded of Andrei Tarkovsky’s work in that sense.
Kogonada balances this refined craftsmanship with a deeply human streak when it comes to performance. Farrell is one of our most underrated actors, capable of blockbuster acting like next year’s “The Batman” but also something as intimate as this project. He fills Jake with just enough grief, frustration and uncertainty he wants Yang back for his daughter but also for what he meant to Jake himself and when it seems like Yang’s memories could become part of some public display, questions what’s appropriate or not about who and how we remember our loved ones on larger scales?
What do we keep for ourselves? What do we share with everybody else? Amidst all this tech talk and deep philosophy, Farrell grounds the movie by knowing how much we’ll always be searching for those un-reproducible in a lab parts of life. It is an incredibly subtle performance matched by everyone from Sarita Choudhury to Clifton Collins Jr. among supporting players.
Much of “After Yang” feels like a dream too from the way images tumble into each other during Yang’s memories set to gorgeous music by ASKA and Ryuichi Sakamoto, to the setting of a world that’s not ours but not too distant either, a common backdrop for dreamscapes. Kogonada’s film is constantly asking incredibly deep questions, culminating in a flashback scene in which Kyra and Yang talk about what comes next.
Yang has not been programmed to believe in anything, even saying “There’s no something without nothing.” Is life the something, following by the nothing? But even he seems to be shifting in this scene, quoting what has been attributed to Lao Tzu: “What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.” His visions of existence are shifting and growing more into humanity than his coding ever precise detailed for him steeping like good tea. Like all of us.
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