Film Review: After Yang
Images courtesy of Kismet Movies.
Having been a part of our cinematic landscape ever since 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, science fiction, or sci-fi has acted as both a window to worlds beyond, and a mirror to the worlds within. What makes us tick, our relationship with technology, where we came from, what comes after; these are just a handful of the grand notions that sci-fi works have grappled with over the years. From Lang’s Metropolis, to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to Ridley Scott’s Alien, we have used fiction to explore the idea of our place in the universe. Despite how saturated the genre seems, filmmakers return time and time again to its wellspring of seemingly infinite narrative possibilities, searching for a new angle. Enter Kogonada’s After Yang: a rumination on memory, love, and loss, through the lens of a humanistic and grounded portrayal of artificial intelligence.
The titular Yang (Justin H. Min) is a “techno sapien”, bought second-hand by parents Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) to help connect their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) to her Chinese heritage, that is until he breaks down, sending Jake down a rabbithole of Yang’s past as he attempts to fix his surrogate son. Opting to peel back the sci-fi elements to their bare essentials, After Yang functions equally as a sort of metaphysical drama, using the concept of artificial intelligence to engage with an examination of grief and what it means to belong; parallels can be easily drawn between themes of cultural identity and Jake’s journey into Yang’s previously unknown memories.
Changing perspectives are signified through shifting aspect ratios, and many of the short clips we see from Yang’s consciousness appear to be shot handheld on film; a fitting creative choice that grounds these snippets of digital flashbacks with raw emotion, and adds to the tactile nature of the film. Despite taking place in a future with Tron-like automated cars, After Yang’s world is littered with soft, incandescent lights, damp greenery, and rich, wooden interiors motivated by a distinctly cross-cultural approach to architectural design. This texture lends itself to a story that prioritises prompting internal questions, rather than finger-pointing in the dystopianc fashion that science fiction is widely known for.
Deliberate in pace yet nimble on its toes, After Yang lulls the audience into a world not too distant from the one we live in; serene and serendipitous in its own, melancholic way.
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After Yang is screening in cinemas nationwide from Thursday the 28th of April. For tickets and more info click here.