The aspect ratio expands vertically to a full-frame 16:9. His gaze often falls on formations made by sunlight and shadow, and on food and nature, as if he were a photographer capturing the world’s silent music. The film’s palette changes drastically whenever it presents Yang’s memories, filmed from his point of view. Though the couple only discovers the emotional distance between them when they finally recognize the beauty they’ve been missing. Nothing is wrong with their household per se, apart from the odd disagreement. These interior scenes, which are mostly set in the family’s kitchen, and in various rooms around their warmly lit modernist home, have damp and flat digital quality - as if the RAW video files had been color-timed only slightly - but the images are just bright enough, and just colorful enough, to feel inviting on the surface.

The carefully composed 2.35:1 widescreen frame captures the family in languid wide and medium shots evocative of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (whose frequent screenwriter Noda Kōgo was the inspiration for Kogonada’s pseudonym). When Jake begins watching these memories back, in the form of brief video files he accesses through slick VR glasses, it opens up a whole new world for the quiet tea salesman, and a whole new understanding of what - or who - he has actually lost.įor most of the film, Kogonada and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb present Jake and Kyra’s world with a calculated stillness. Yang, it seems, had been recording memories, something of which “Technosapiens” ought to be incapable, according to museum curator Cleo (Sarita Choudhury), a woman who studies the wonders of artificial beings. However, given Yang’s capacity for learning, his recordings turn out to have been more complex and more selective than mere metadata harvesting. Here, Jake discovers that his walking cultural encyclopedia of a son may also have come equipped with malicious spyware. When Yang shuts down, Jake’s overbearing neighbor George (Clifton Collins Jr.) directs him to a conspiracy-minded repairman, Russ (Ritchie Coster), since Yang is out of warranty. They’re a happy family, and if the synchronized dance competition during the opening credits is anything to go by - a colorful blast featuring numerous other families with androids and apparent clones - they’re a typical family as well, though one whose daily interactions occasionally feel on autopilot. Their daughter is a Chinese adoptee, and in order to better connect her to her cultural heritage, they purchased Yang second-hand (“certified refurbished,” Jake adds) several years ago to teach her fun facts about China. Jake and Kyra dress in comfortable Japanese kimonos, and Jake even runs a Chinese tea shop. The music by Aska Matsumiya (with one theme by the legendary Ryuichu Sakamoto) is sweet and wistful. It’s an inverse cyberpunk of sorts more of a utopia, with shimmering buildings far in the backdrop, than the dystopic, Blade Runner-esque pan-Asian influence that pervades most western sci-fi. The futuristic world Kogonada creates, with costume and production designers Arjun Bhasin and Alexandra Schaller, is one of serenity, with numerous Chinese, Japanese, and other East Asian designs woven into its fabric. Min), the older brother of Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) malfunctions beyond repair, his parents, Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), learn that he may have been more than just a standard “Technobeing.” As the aloof Jake uncovers Yang’s beautiful secrets, they force him to reflect on his own life, and on the experiences he may have been missing out on as a father, a husband, and a human being.

Written and directed by Kogonada, and adapted from the short story “ Saying Goodbye to Yang” by Alexander Weinstein, the film unfolds an unknown number of decades (or centuries) from now, in a matter-of-fact future where artificially intelligent older siblings are commonplace for adopted children. A sci-fi mystery turned inside out, After Yang is an achingly gorgeous film about clones and androids, loss and memory, culture and family, all bound by a breathtaking visual approach.

After yang