‘After Yang’ Is An Elegant Film On The Transformative Power Of Loss

Although After Yang is set in a future when it’s possible to watch films through your glasses while riding in a driverless car, it covers the same themes of loss and transformation deftly explored by director Kogonada in his first film Columbus. The fact that this film focuses on the obsolescence of a techno-sapien rather than a distant human father is secondary to the realization that it’s sometimes impossible to know others until they are gone and you are called to disassemble their life.

Yang is a techno-sapien, purchased second hand as a companion, an older brother and a way to culturally enrich the life of a couple’s adopted child, played by Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja.

He culturally enriches her life with information about China, where she was born, but also enriches her life emotionally, often serving as a substitute parent. Both her parents, played by Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith, have their own demanding agendas that often leave little time to interact with their child. As a result she bonds closely with Yang, played by Justin H. Min, and is disconsolate when he malfunctions. 

Yang is so integrated into their daily lives that the parents take him for granted and that is a mistake. He’s more human than they realize and they might have a lot to learn from the way he sees things. 

The film poses a sci-fi construct increasingly explored in fiction as humanity embraces the personification of AI, raising such questions as what it means to be human, how responsible we might be for such potential hybrid human creations and how the humanity we install in such creations has something to tell us about who we are.

Kogonada’s films are meditations on the meaning of love and loss. As such the stories do not unfold in a conventional narrative, but they do stay with you, much as Yang’s memories stay with Farrell’s character in the film. 

The Korean-American director acquired a following for creating video essays on his cinematic heroes and in this film, he uses some of the visually distinctive techniques he explores in those essays, framing scenes as Wes Anderson might, exploring quiet daily moments as Ozu might, focusing on hands as Besson did.

Kogonada has a gift for portraying the relation between people and their environment. To portray the comfortable yet somehow disconnected world that Yang and his family live in, Kogonada visually dwells on a series of liminal spaces, empty in-between spaces, and empty connected rooms that are picture-perfect, but seem two-dimensional. The home is often dark and sunlight only glitters in Yang’s elegiac memories.

The family is encapsulated in a predictable plugged-in world but they often fail to connect. Farrell’s character lives in his own bubble, pondering philosophical questions while missing out on the glittering moments of an ordinary day.

Kogonada’s films do not offer answers, but they do elegantly pose questions and prompt viewers to pause and consider the glittering moments of their everyday lives.

The film will be released on March 4.