On being, Descartes famously opined, “I think therefore I am.” Well, actually, he said, “Cogito, ergo sum,” but no one speaks Latin these days so you get the gist. After Yang, an existential science fiction movie from video essayist turned director Kogonada (Columbus), takes a step beyond the 17-century French philosopher to ponder what constitutes being in a world where humans and artificially-intelligent robots known as “technosapien” co-exist.
The American science-fiction drama which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival pulls from Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang”. In this view of the future, there is – thankfully – no metaverse. Nor is there any pollution or clutter. As envisioned by the visionary Kogonada, the future is basically a Marie Kondo wet dream: tidy, minimalist, sparking all kinds of joy. There’s touches of the familiar rubbing against idealized futurism. Self-driving cars zoom though sparsely-lit subterranean-tunnels to fetch steaming bowls of ramen. The whole of Kogonada’s future worldscape is aesthetically pleasing, a zap of Japanese-influenced imagination where technology is fused with naturalism. It’s a beauty to behold.
Occupying the space, there are humans, technosapiens, and clones. Colin Farrell’s Jake is one such human, a tea shop owner with a multicultural family. His wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) is another. After a family outing, their technosapien Yang (Justin H. Min) malfunctions and shuts down. They soon realize that life comes to pieces in his absence. Their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), who looks to Yang as both a guardian and a brother, takes the news the hardest.
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A somber meditation on what it means to be family, After Yang is a film about coming to terms with a great loss. Within, family becomes an expansive and inclusive term. While Jake strikes out to see if Yang can be repaired and returned to his former self, the film slips in flashbacks to the many memories the family shared, underscoring just how quintessential a part of the family Yang was. More than just a “certified refurbished” technosapien, an android, an AI assistant, a robot, or whatever it is one wants to call him, Yang was a brother, a friend. Just as much a family member as the family dog.
After Yang’s exploration of memory yields sequences that recall Pixar’s Inside Out. Having extracted Yang’s core memories, Jake is able to see the world through Yang’s eyes, glimpsing firsthand the delicacy which which his technosapien approaches life and the many relationships that populated that life. It’s a beautifully tender, and at some sobering, drama that attempts to answer the question: do androids dream of organic family?
CONCLUSION: ‘After Yang’ is a stunningly beautiful, emotionally yearning science-fiction drama about what it means to be family; and what it means to lose family. Grounded in emotional depth and philosophical curiosity, this moody A24 feature is an affecting, beautifully-realized think piece on the nature of memory and existence.
B+
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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