"After Yang" review — quiet, reserved sci-fi film an emotional tour-de-force

“Come on, Yang!”

One morning, quite unexpectedly, a family loses a child. It’s an upsetting shock to them, especially to Mike (newcomer Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), the adoptive daughter of Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith). See, Yang was brought into the family for a purpose. Wanting to protect and preserve their daughter’s Chinese identity as much as they can, Jake and Kyra brought Yang into their home to teach Mike about what it means to be Chinese. Yang isn’t the product of human biological capabilities, but rather technical and electronic expertise. Yang’s an android, a second-hand one, too. And one day, he just stops working. Jake takes Yang’s body from place to place, hoping that someone can find out just what went wrong. As the family delves into Yang’s memories, they uncover a fascinating new perspective on their own lives and the lives Yang interacted with long before them.

Premiering at the Cannes film festival in July 2021 but only just making it to theatres and to streaming in North America, the slow-moving and meditative sci-fi flick is the second film writer-director Kogonada. It’s adapted from the short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” a very simple, sparse text, by Andrew Weinstein. After Yang is a soft, loving movie. It’s a fascinating exploration of a unique type of grief, of forming new identities, and the complex reality of adoption. It’s a strikingly emotional film with its beautiful score and understated performances. After Yang, with all its subtly and raw emotional content, is a film that is very difficult to put into words.

Jake, the owner of a poorly performing tea shop, makes a promise to Mike to repair her brother. He ventures out into the unnamed city to find an answer. The company Brothers & Sister, the manufacturer of the “techno sapiens,” recommends replacing Yang altogether. Knowing what Yang meant to Mike, he begins to investigate new ways to bring him back. And that’s when Jake uncovers Yang’s memory bank filled with snapshots of his time with Jake’s family. Colin Farrell, hot off the heels of his performance in The Batman (2022), proves his immense talent here with his quiet and reserved performance as Jake. His exploration of Yang’s memories walks the fine line between tragedy and optimism. The rest of the cast is suburb as well with the best moments occurring in the film’s many, sometimes contradictory flashbacks. These quiet moments of interaction, often cutting between slightly altered versions of the same lines, build this slowly growing feeling of profound emotional involvement that After Yang derives its power from.

Colin Farrel in After Yang. Photo: A24.

The world of After Yang is beautifully realized. Production designer Alexandra Schaller’s work evokes an intimate and organic blend of the future and the present. Greenery and plant life features more prominently than flying cars or cutting-edge AI. The film’s visual style emphasizes the practical elements of its sets and environments which maintain the humanity of its futuristic setting. The cinematography would rather focus on drops of rain and reflections in glass rather than sweeping shots of cities at the edge of the century. The digital is offset by the organic; the artificial facts stored in Yang’s brain about the history of tea making in China are complemented by Jake’s intimate knowledge of the taste and textures of tea. The future here is presented as radically multicultural, capturing a deeply humanistic and hopeful view of humanity’s destiny on Earth. It’s all done in service of this mournful, meditative atmosphere Kogonada wants to construct.

Yang’s memories are seen through the computer as little points of light in an expanding galaxy of knowledge. These memories sometimes appear insignificant, but when brought all together, they paint a picture of tenderness and love. In one flashback, Mike and Yang find themselves in an orchard as Mike wrestles with her adopted identity. Yang introduces her to the concept of grafting. “They do it to make something new,” Yang says to his sister tenderly. “You're a part of the family tree.” His sister replies, “then so are you.” Yang just smiles.

After Yang is a deeply emotional film, but it doesn’t go after the viewer with overly dramatic sequences or obvious baiting. Instead, After Yang offers a resonating, humanistic, and optimistic message about grief and family. It’s a film about a search for peace after a death in the family. It captures the sudden, inescapable void in life that death brings and coming to understand those we’ve lost far better after they were gone than when they were with us. After Yang is about searching for the memories of the ones we love. Not just memories of them, but how they saw the world. Yang, despite the limited way in which Jake, Kyra, and the rest of society see him, was a creature of love.

Score: 4.5

After Yang is now playing in select theatres and available on streaming.

After Yang information
Written and directed by Kogonada
Starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Justin H. Min, and Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja
Released 11 March 2022
95 minutes