After Yang (2022)

Like with his previous feature, COLUMBUS, Director Kogonada has fashioned an evocative tale about communication. Taking the form of a sci-fi film, AFTER YANG concerns a married couple, Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodi Turner-Smith), who have adopted a Chinese girl Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). In this unspecified future, a family can employ a surrogate android sibling, here named Yang (Justin Min). Yang acts not only as an older brother, but as a tutor who gives Mika a richer understanding of her Chinese heritage. When Yang malfunctions, the parents scramble to repair him, during which time they are able to 'plug in' to his memory chip.

Kogonada (who also adapted the script from an Alexander Weinstein short story) isn't that interested in the hardware that makes up Yang, but, his inner "thoughts" - his very notion of existence (the science fiction elements are handled quite well). What's fascinating here is that this is truly a two-way interaction - the family is as tied emotionally to Yang as the robot is in its role as an adopted family member. Haley Lu Richardson plays Ada, another character who's questioning her own existential being.

AFTER YANG may seem like heavy going, but, Kogonada and the wonderful cast present the tale in a most simple, unaffected manner. Lessons aren't delivered, but experienced. Some of the most sublime moments are as simple as drinking a glass of water. The viewer takes from the movie what they bring to it. Kogonada leaves it up the audience to decide what Yang's very being represents -- and how humans will accept that autonomy.

Fmovies: When I check to see how much time is left in a movie, I know it's a stinker. "Profound, sincere, beautiful, meaningful, contemplative, etc." lose their meaning when one's asleep.

One of these modern movies where absolutely nothing happens and the mood is artificially kept cold and distant as if real life was like that. Kid is also annoying af.

After Yang fmovies. Colin Farrell's long liked art-fart tosh (witness "The Lobster") but writer / director Koganda's dire sci-fi drama "After Yang" is a new low for him. In the near-future he & Jodie Turner-Smith find Justin H Min (the cyborg they bought to keep adopted daughter Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja company) has suddenly stopped working. Trying to fix him Farrell plods thru the likes of Clifton Collins Jnr & Ritchie Coster, bogged by a depressing score and painfully slow pretentious dialogue on the nature of life, death, after-life, family, belonging, etc. What does it mean? Anyone enduring this waste of acting talent deserves to know... but almost certainly won't. It's a turd.

In 2017 I decided to watch the nominees of most of the well-known award ceremonies and the Independent spirits awards had multiple nominations including best first feature, best first screenplay and best cinematography for the movie "Columbus". That was the most pleasant surprise I had that year because unlike most of the other films I've heard for the first time by checking those lists, "Columbus" blew me away by its visual language. It said a ton even when the movie itself stayed simple and didn't rely too much on exposition. So, I was excited about Kogonada's second feature and he completely delivered.

There have been many films that ask questions about the existence and consciousness of artificial beings. Most of them explore a bigger story where this plot point will be used for dramatic effect and the twists and turns in the plot. But none have felt as heartfelt and poignant as this one. The film feels so personal as most of the film occurs inside a house. Unlike "Columbus" where he explored the architecture of that small town to show the dreams and confusions of the characters, here Kogonada uses the confines inside an elegantly designed house to show the barriers and connections between the family members. The film explores themes like what constitutes a family, what makes someone human, what is memories, what is beyond our existence as we know it, and about the ability of the human mind to love and hate anything without seemingly needing any logic, etc. It also shows various ways people would choose to mourn a beloved person. Some of it is seen directly as part of the story and some are shown partially and leave the audience to work it out themselves.

Is everyone but the little girl a robot? Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith have zero chemistry or appearance of a meaningful relationship. They don't seem like parents. They seem like robot care-takers, like in Raised by Wolves.

The Sci-Fi elements are... dumb. Like the utterly pointless scene of Farrell trying to guess the right sequence of command words to an AI in a world with completely sentient robots. Make up your mind, can AI in this world understand natural human speech, or can it not? It all feels very "Boomer".

This is the worst thing I've ever seen connected to A24.