#after yang
The premise of After Yang might require a mild digestif. A work of speculative science fiction from the video-essayist-turned-director kogonada, it concerns the inner workings of an unconventional family: adoptive father Jake (played by Colin Farrel), the proprietor of an artisanal tea shop; his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), busy and detached; their daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), an adopted child from China; and Yang, the android they purchased to be her ersatz older brother. Near the film’s start Yang breaks down and, with Mika distraught, Jake must find a way to get him back online. On his travels he discovers that Yang’s hardware has been custom fitted to record and save a few seconds of video each day, a moment that the A.I. finds most valuable; or, in other words, to find evidence of an inner emotional life. Phew.
It is the second feature to be released by kogonada, a South Korean-born, American-based filmmaker who took to making features with consummate ease with his 2017 debut Columbus. A love story in hushed tones, it used the clean lines of that city’s famed architecture as a profound backdrop to the complicities of his characters’ desires—an allegory as neat as Saarinen’s spire. After Yang swings for a similar calm catharsis but fails to make contact. Though ambitious in reach, its tone is one-note, stilted, and saccharine sweet, its ideas as disjointed as they are ultimately unsatisfying.
The Batman (¾)
After Yang(¾)
Umma(3/18)
X(3/18)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (3/25)
Mitski: Glide (Official Audio)
After Yang (2021)
Director - Kogonada, Cinematography - Benjamin Loeb
“Is this something that you believe? That the end is also the beginning?”
