After Yang (2021)

directed by Kogonada

USA

96 minutes

4.5 stars out of 5

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Oh yeah, this one hurt me. I have to admit that I still get excited for a new A24 movie - as popular as it might be to poke fun at the studio's artsy output, and with all of its flaws that I will readily acknowledge, I still think they're consistently putting out some of the best genre movies today. I'm not familiar with the short story that was the basis for this, so my review will be solely for the film itself.

After Yang is set in either an optimistic future or a better version of the present, and the aesthetics of it are the very first thing you notice. It got close to losing me in the first five minutes, but the thing that brought me back around and got me hooked into it was the dance scene that plays during the opening credits. Credits are usually skippable by nature, but if that scene had not been there, it would have changed the feeling of the entire film for me. Something so energetic and fun being present in such an immaculately groomed world indicated to me that even though the core of the film might appear to be based off of looks, everything about it is a vehicle for telling us something about humanity. Even the angle the dance scene is shot from is perfect - the way the camera remains stable at around adult torso level, so that Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, who plays six-ish-year-old Mimi, looks every bit as tiny as she is, but it still giving it all she's got.

Even so, the look of this film may still lose people. It rubbed me the wrong way for the same reason why horror films that start off with a family moving into a house that would cost more than most people I know make in a year rub me the wrong way: I can't connect to something when the presumption is of wealth and prosperity. But After Yang really doesn't feel like that. "Prosperity" might be on display here, but it didn't feel like it was connected to wealth. Like I said, this is either a better future or a better present, one where the environmental problems plaguing us today seem to be largely solved and humans are able to live in a comfortable and above all beautiful world where flora and fauna are seamlessly incorporated into our lives, and vice versa. Everyone's home is filled with hardwoods, natural fabrics, and healthy, lush plants. All cars appear to be self-driving and are also, from what I could see on my small screen, filled with plants. This looks like a world where nobody has to worry about dying from environmental injustice anymore - it is still not perfect, and is filled with human flaws and prejudices, but there's something deeply serene about it.

The film is, as the title implies, set after Mimi's companion android Yang dies, for all intents and purposes. We see a little of him in the present day at the beginning, but everything we know of him after that is seen through his memories of the past - a method of storytelling that fits the emotional tone of the film and absolutely wrecked me personally. The existence of synthetic humans referred to as "Technosapiens" is an established fact throughout the film, and the way they coexist with born humans is fascinating to me: Yang is what they call a "cultural" Technosapiens, intended for families with Chinese-adopted children to buy to assist their children with feeling more connected to their heritage. Despite the seemingly tranquil and balanced society, it is made extremely clear that most people view Technosapiens as objects. They're referred to with pronouns, but treated like objects. No one shies away from admitting that you buy them like any other product, and Mimi's father carrying Yang slung over his shoulder like an unwieldy carpet, before hauling him around to several variously indifferent repairpersons, highlights the fact that society at large does not seem to give these beings full human autonomy. Also present but not elaborated upon are clones - the father openly dislikes them, despite multiple people in his community being clones. All in all, prejudices definitely do exist in After Yang's created world; they might not run along the exact same lines that they do in our world, but the introduction of new technology and new ways to be human seems only to have spawned ugly new ways to exclude and scorn, as well.

At multiple points during the film, people express disbelief that a "cultural" android could have romantic feelings or be otherwise capable of being anything other than defined by their race. That Yang could be anything other than Chinese. This was one of the places where this film mirrors reality. People struggle to see Yang's faceted existence as a person because they only see his race.

But as the film goes on, the tides begin to change. We see a side of Yang that his non-synthetic family was blind to. His adoptive younger sister can see it; she views him as nothing less than a true brother, but it seems like most of the adult populace just sees him, again, as a product. Yang has a viewpoint of the world that is entirely different from ours, and therein lies the backbone of the film. This is a movie about an android - a science fiction story - but it is also about the possibility of looking at the world in a different way. It's about realizing that you have become jaded and used to experiencing your life in a specific way, that the years have beaten that into you and trained you to live according to what's expected of you. Again, even in a peaceful world like the one this film shows us, there is still a level of societal - if not simply personal - expectation. But Yang contradicts those expectations, and the tragedy of this is that his memories physically have to be dug out of him for anyone to understand this. We, and the other characters, get to see that Yang viewed his world as a place that was utterly precious and full of individual miracles, but no one understands this until after Yang dies. No one, that is, except his little sister.

So this movie cut me to the core in a rare and exceptional way. I think some of the best fiction makes us realize the true breadth of the world - our world, the one we really live in - by creating a world that's just slightly different from reality and using it to highlight the things we might not notice. After Yang is a well-crafted film full of talented actors, but it also feels simple. An unfamiliar world inhabited by speculative versions of future humans is used to show the inherent need to find and connect.