The Tender Humanity of After Yang
“Something wonderful is happening.”
To say that After Yang, a tender family drama set in a softly expressed sci-fi future which centers around a family’s android malfunctioning, was my most longingly anticipated film throughout the first years of the pandemic would seem strange—unless you had a similar experience with Kogonada’s Columbus.
Kogonada has a particular eye for creating a world through images. While Columbus is not nearly so reliant on creative set design as After Yang’s future of androids and clones, it is just as imaginative a feat. In his earlier film, Kogonada managed to both craft a story and shoot a location with a felt sense of care for his subject. The architecture that was mundane to the townspeople was given the wonder that it was always intended to carry.
Kogonada has again created a film that demonstrates both formal control and tenderness. Colin Farrell plays Jake, owner of a humble—read, seldomly frequented—tea shop, husband to Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) and father to Mika (Malea Tjandrawidja). The fourth member of the family is Yang (Justin Min), an android companion purchased to help Mika learn about her cultural heritage.
Over time, Yang becomes not just a tutor or companion, but a crucial part of the family’s life together. So when Yang breaks down, it’s not a matter of replacing a household item or even a pet. It’s a matter of grief, of desperation. Of love.
The world of After Yang is one seen in the glances of houses, witnessed in the styled interiors of vehicles, absorbed in conversational asides. Kogonada captures this reality with soft, intimate lighting and sharp architectural corners. The future-modern is always framed alongside the natural as the glass walls of a home reflect the tree in their courtyard, the focus in cars is the plants surrounding the passengers. Altogether, these fragments gesture toward a future that is neither the common dismal fare of steampunk nor a pristine utopic vision. There’s honest beauty and remnant pains. It’s still a world with sharp divisions, but it’s also one where intentional room is made to care for nature as technology rapidly progresses.
Jake himself seems to represent this duality. His tea shop eschews the idea that tea is a mere drink for caffeine, but is an experience of memory and presence as much as of taste. Likewise, he bears a strange reluctance toward neighbor which could be due to the fact that his neighbor’s daughters are clones (although it could simply be because he’s the type of guy who “paints his face for sporting events”).
When Yang breaks down, Jake nearly does, too. Though his breaking is slower, less certain. Jake hardly knows how to respond, trying to balance his family’s emotional and financial needs against his best efforts to get Yang fixed. As the scales continue to tip out of his control, he’s forced to address the pain of fully losing Yang, and what that would mean for his daughter, and what that would mean for himself. Farrell’s performance conveys an ocean of sadness through hesitations and glances. A skilled and expressive actor, Farrell has been outstanding (yet still somehow quieter than one would expect) in many roles over the past decade. I’m tempted to say he’s never been better.
Jake’s quest eventually shifts from fixing Yang to understanding him, and his encounter of Yang changes as he does so. Yang’s stored memories reveal a depth of the android’s emotions and experiences that hadn’t seemed possible. To use the framework outlined by philosopher Martin Buber, Jake’s relating to Yang begins to shift from an I-It relationship to I-Thou, no longer using Yang to understand himself, but seeing the fulness of Yang’s individual existence.
Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun, Kogonada’s film probes into intriguing questions. The question of “What does it mean to be human?” has been posed hundreds of times to effective ends, and thousands more to rote ends. Instead, After Yang asks about the meaning that is formed in relationship between humans and androids. Even if a subject isn’t by all accounts human, the bonds of time and meaning that are shared cohere into a substantial life. And the loss of that life brings with it the same confrontation with grief, even if covered by layers of technology.
In terms of our own world, After Yang asks us to consider how we make our present technology more human. What does substantial, meaningful technology look like, and how can we cultivate it instead of the sort that divides, destroys, and atomizes? The tragedy that Jake can’t navigate is so often our own: Technology is remarkably powerful when it comes to attenuating grief, but it can’t resolve it. That step remains with us. We have more and more access to recorded texts, photos, videos—replayed experiences—and while those can nourish us as we confront grief, they can’t drive us to move forward in the midst of it. No matter our technology, we still have to admit the pain of our loss if we want to continue a substantial life.
Above all else, After Yang is a film deeply attuned to the unanswerable questions of grief, yet it still breathes with hope. It’s the hope that, even as all things end, things might begin again. It’s the hope of butterflies and grafted branches. And, perhaps, the hope for all things.
