Mark Reviews Movies: AFTER YANG

After Yang, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 3, 2022

"Maybe I don't have the language," observes Jake (Colin Farrell), the father a daughter adopted from China, to Yang (Justin H. Min), the android who serves as the girl's older brother. The man is trying to describe the unique taste of real tea, in a world where and at a time when most people make the beverage from crystals. Advances in technology has made things convenient in the future of After Yang, and it has also made people complacent and unaware of the important matters of living.

Jake might be talking about tea here, but like the film itself, that conversation is really about much more. The tale, originally from the short story "Saying Goodbye to Yang" by Alexander Weinstein, is brought to vivid and elliptical life by writer/director Kogonada. That story is ostensibly about the android and its past, a race to try to rescue the machine from a potentially fatal malfunction, and the family confronting the possibility of a life without the artificial life who has become a vital member. It's also, though, about much more, and Kogonada reveals and examines all of that in a language beyond words.

The family is made up of Jake, his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), and their daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). Yang, we learn, came into their home shortly after the couple adopted Mika. His role is to connect her to her cultural history and heritage.

The fact that a company has designed and programmed androids for this specific purpose tells us something about the state of this world of an unspecified future. The filmmakers are smart and subtle in the ways they bring attention to the design and logistics of this future, without making it the key focus or overwhelming us with on-screen gimmickry and visual effects. There's a genuine sense of optimism to this world, as well—from the lush forest surrounding the family's home and some domes, to the clean lines and air of the city in the backdrop, to the comforting interiors of the family's driverless car, which quietly moves through featureless backdrops and gives the characters more freedom for conversation.

Indeed, the film's credits run over images of the family, as well as those of other characters whom will figure into this story, playing an online dance game that requires synchronization. There's an unbridled sense of joy, as well as domestic and widespread community, to the sequence. It's especially necessary after we learn that Mika has started to notice that her parents are often busy with work—and particularly before the central plot begins.

That starts when Yang continues dancing, even after the game has ended for the family. In the next scene, Yang is out of commission—unconscious, essentially, in a kind of rest mode or, worse, broken at the computing core of his existence.

Mika isn't ready to lose the android she has known as a brother her entire life, and Kyra knows that she and her husband have come to rely on Yang—too much, to be sure—to raise their daughter. No matter what happens with the fourth member of the family, the couple has to be prepared to be a more significant part of their daughter's life. In the meantime, Jake begins searching for someone who can fix Yang.

There are difficulties. Yang is a refurbished "techno," purchased from a little shop that has since gone out of business. A nice little detail of childhood resilience, by the way, is how the fearful Mika finds immediate comfort in her father buying her a goldfish, and that's neither the first nor the last instance of Kogonada including small gestures that point at unspoken but potent ideas.

Eventually, Jake finds Russ (Ritchie Coster), an independent repairman. When the tinkerer discovers a chip containing recordings made by Yang, Jake finds Cleo (Sarita Choudhury), a curator at a technology museum. She explains that the recordings are, in a certain way, Yang's memories. The android was part of a now-defunct program, which was intended to determine what technos determined to be important to their existence.

With the foundations of some form of plot out of the way, Kogonada's screenplay takes this story in an entirely different direction, emphasizing the relationships that have been established (and will be revealed). Through them, the film delves into broad and universal concepts and questions, such as memory, communication, love, family, grief, parenting, faith, and, essentially, what truly matters in life.

If that sounds like a lot, it is, but Kogonada is crafty and skilled in the way he presents these ideas, not through direct dialogue (although a discussion about adoption and the nature of family, using the metaphor of a tree, between Yang and Mika is particularly touching), but through imagery and editing. This is that intangible language, which goes beyond words, as Jake recalls a way he once heard someone describe the taste of tea, and goes straight to the core of experiences.

Some of this comes through Yang's "memories," viewed in short snippets of his life with this family and, as Jake later discovers, other lives before theirs (Haley Lu Richardson plays a young woman who befriended Yang—and whose connection to him might go much farther back than either of them could have known). There's a real, aching beauty in the way Kogonada visualizes that collection of memories like a field of stars—each of them looking like a galaxy as Jake moves closer to them through his virtual reality glasses.

The snippets are short and clear, and a montage of Jake seeing his daughter's life unfold in a flash through those seconds-long clips is profound—as is Farrell's subdued but affecting reaction to the experience (His performance is such throughout). If these are moments of fleeting accuracy (as the present always is, even if we aren't aware of it in the moment), the memories of Jake, Kyra, and Mika in their most important interactions with Yang are malleable and uncertain. Lines of dialogue are repeated in different tones, as if the person recalling the scenes is trying to get the mood and significance of what happened just right—either for the truth of the past or for what they need to hear now.

The impact of After Yang is in the way it examines and embraces the inherent mysteries of memory and connection. It's a difficult concept to communicate, but thankfully, the film possesses the language to make us experience it.

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