After Yang
“Kogonada’s After Yang leaves us with a viscerally Asian American experience that few other filmmakers could put on screen.”
Title: After Yang (2022)
Director: Kogonada 👨🏻🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Kogonada 👨🏻🇺🇸 based on the short story by Alexander Weinstein 👨🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Weiting 👩🏻🇨🇳🇺🇸
—MILD SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 5/5
Writer-director Kogonada’s sophomore film After Yang, which enjoyed a warm welcome at Sundance Film Festival this year, was liberally adapted from Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang.” Upon the age-old inquiry into what it means to be human, the South Korean-born American filmmaker layers cultural awareness to further explore what it means to be not just human, but Asian.
The film opens with a digital dance sequence reminiscent of another AI film from indie studio A24, Ex Machina (2014), in which humans and cyborgs juxtapose each other. From there, Kogonada proceeds to build a futuristic world of Zen and a tender audiovisual experience ensues.
Narratively, audiences follow a father, Jake (Colin Farrell), as he investigates the mysterious breakdown of his family’s beloved AI humanoid named Yang (Justin H. Min). Kogonada seamlessly switches back and forth between Yang’s stored memories and the film’s real-time plot, while manifesting the characters with depth and complexity. He and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb’s meditative pillow shots create a beautiful tension that appears still on the surface, such as allowing the camera to rest on tea leaves that steep and unfurl while philosophical turmoil churns just underneath. Layers of meaning fold upon layers, making After Yang not just an aesthetically pleasing film, but one that will make an imprint on viewers who take the time to sit and absorb its carefully crafted messages.
Gender: 2.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE
The film’s female characters, though well-written, unfortunately exist to support its male leads. Jake occupies most scenes as the evasive, brooding patriarch. While his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) is presented as his equal—she speaks her own mind and during a memorable one-on-one scene, she shares an empathetic exchange with Yang—she ultimately remains forced into the domestic stereotype of an emotionally mature wife who must hold herself back to keep the “peace” of her marriage.
Ada (Haley Lu Richardson) solely functions as Yang’s love interest to uncover more myths about him. Pivotal to Yang’s memory montages, Ada comes across as delicately vulnerable thanks to a strong performance by Richardson. However, it’s disappointing that Ada’s important revelations about Yang are only conveyed through her conversations with Jake. More interesting would’ve been to see these scenes set up between Ada and Kyra, allowing female characters the space to hold relationships with each other, and not only with the men in their lives.
Ada (top) and Yang (bottom)
Race: 5/5
Mainstream films featuring Asian Americans, such as Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), resort to familiar fantasies (and sometimes stereotypes) in their appeals to a larger audience. In contrast, Kogonada uses sci-fi to create a more authentic allegory of the Asian American experience.
As a Chinese national, I have been living in the United States for my entire adult life. I relate to Yang’s troubled self-identity in my own persistent sense of rootlessness, caught between two countries. And I constantly ponder where my place is in America’s racial landscape. Kogonada brilliantly captures this diasporic condition in Yang’s duality as a Chinese AI in a multiracial family.
Other than the family’s adopted Chinese daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), it’s Kyra—played by English Jamaican actor Turner-Smith—who has the strongest bond with Yang. Meanwhile, museum curator and AI historian Cleo, played by English and Bengali Indian Sarita Choudhury, is the first person to champion Yang’s humanity by validating his memories. Their love and support for Yang show solidarity across skin tones and push back against the Asian “model minority” myth, which attempts to pit us against other racial groups.
This sense of solidarity and inclusion takes place at the micro-level during an intimate scene, where Yang teaches Mika about the Chinese invention of “grafting,” a botanical technique of combining different roots to create a new plant. By doing so, he reassures that her coexisting identities—a Chinese girl adopted by a white father and Black mother who is bullied at school for not having “real parents”—will only make her stronger. Against the lush garden backdrop, Yang’s message speaks not just to Mika, but myself as well, as it encourages me to consider my Chinese identity as part of this country’s multiracial landscape rather than floating outside of it.
Mika (left) and Yang (right)
Throughout the film, in fact, Min’s meticulous portrayal of Yang empowers Chinese traits, rather than shying away from them. In Yang and Mika’s everyday life, we get glimpses of how Chinese people take care of each other. Upon the fleeting shot of a couple of peeled tangerines on a ceramic plate, bathed in soft afternoon sunlight, I got hit by a crescendo of nostalgia for my childhood home in Chengdu, China. My mom and grandma would always peel tangerines for me to snack on, and I have no doubt that it is Yang who does the same for Mika. This is his Chinese love language.
Besides the film’s Chinese representation, its piano-centered score by Japanese composer ASKA is supported by the legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto, who composed a main theme for the film. Renowned for his Oscar-winning score in The Last Emperor (1987), Sakamoto maintains an experimental, introspective style that aligns well with Kogonada’s elliptical approach. But as exciting as it is to know the star power behind the soundtrack, more affecting for me on a personal level were the film’s instrumental version of UA’s “Mizuiro,” and Mitski’s cover of Lily Chou-Chou’s “Glide.” The second I heard both tunes I burst into tears, because they were such sentimental sounds of Japanese pop culture that echoed throughout East Asia in the late aughts. In the hands of Korean American Kogonada, and covered by biracial Japanese American musician Mitski, the unique blend of influences from Asia channeled through an American lens couldn’t have felt more on target to what we broadly refer to as the “Asian American” perspective.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.00
In a brief scene, Jake interacts with a barista named Faye, played by Eve Lindley who is trans. Her role feels entirely realistic, neither too cheerful nor villainous. While their exchange doesn’t last long enough to get a bump in this category, the casting of trans talent into normalized roles is always appreciated.
Mediaversity Grade: B+ 4.17/5
In the film’s end, when Mika gives a eulogy to Yang in Mandarin and sings “Glide,” I realized that I had not felt this exposed by a film in such a long time. Kogonada’s highly affecting story comes full circle and leaves us with a viscerally Asian American experience that few other filmmakers could put on screen, and certainly not with the visual and aural language Kogonada is quickly becoming renowned for.
Like After Yang? Try these other restrained Japanese or Japanese-influenced films.
Columbus (2017)
Drive My Car (2022)
To the Ends of the Earth (2019)