Review Tales

After Yang is a sci-fi about a family forced to confront the ideas of grief, love and the meaning of life after their AI malfunctions one day, much like Kogonada’s previous film Columbus, this film feels extremely intimate despite being a sci-fi. Kogonada is not interested in building a grand intricate narrative, instead he presents this film as a meditative character driven tale that relishes in its simplicity.

Kogonada living upto his reputation emphaizes more on human emotions than the science fiction aspects, he makes the thing feel so grounded that the audience can resonate with the emotions on display, regardless of how distant this future may be. He also uses the futuristic landscapes to observe grief and memory, ruminating on the impermanence of life, how losing a close person makes you re-evaluate everything around you. But the movie using the advantage of it being a sci-fi delves deeper to observe how memories of the person we lost become an inseparable part of us, how we yearn for the quiet intimate moments we have shared with someone we loved, it asks us what if we could relive those intimate moments for a brief moment by extracting the memories of the person we lost, what if we got we could see through those memories what was that person’s pain, insecurities and desires, would it be considered too intrusive or is it acceptable. This is the dilemma Colin Farrell’s Jake faces throughout the film.

One thing I particularly loved about this film is its depiction of the relationship between human and technology, it is not done in the manner of Black Mirror which very much limits it to the one dimensional debate of technology good technology bad. Kogonada is not condemning the over reliance of human on technology, because he understands how much comfort it can provide to the humans, the conversations about this topic is far more nuanced than simply coming to a conclusion that technology is evil.

Just like Columbus the camera in After Yang rarely moves, the long shots of characters focus on their subtle movements which allows the viewers to get a deeper understanding of them. The languid pacings and existential musings are also highly reminiscent of Columbus. Kogonada allows the narrative to flow naturally without any sort of haste, if his style worked for you in Columbus, then After Yang will work for you as well, the way it did for me.

The performances from all the actors are great but obviously the one that stands out is of Colin Farrell whose performance is highly understated, he balances between being too inexpressive and being too melodramatic, and gives a painfully poignant performance.

All in all, After Yang is a lofi beautifully rendered sci-fi film that has a big beating heart, the concept which looks too cold and clinical on paper is executed so beautifully that fills the film to the brim with warmth and Kogonada’s charm. I hope Kogonada makes his next film soon and doesn’t wait for 5 years like the last time because he definitely seems my kind of guy.