Colin Farrell plays a father who tries to repair the family’s caretaker-android in a science-fiction tale about what it means to be human.
“What’s so great about being human,” a character asks in “After Yang.” Fair question! People are trouble, though not as much as usual in this muted, melancholic tale about being and belonging. Set in a future that’s at once recognizable and enigmatic, the movie envisions a world so outwardly peaceful it can be hard to believe that it takes place on Earth. Tears are shed, yes, but nearly everyone is awfully nice and almost always uses indoor voices, including the clones and androids that — or, rather, who — are part of the family.
The human-machine interface is teased throughout “After Yang,” which was written and directed by Kogonada and tracks what happens when a family’s android, called Yang, stops working. The shutdown rattles the household, especially the father, who is also the focus of Alexander Weinstein’s original, tart story “Saying Goodbye to Yang.” In both versions, the busted android creates logistical hurdles: The parents work and need a caregiver for their child. But what animates the movie, imbuing it with rueful feeling and nosing it down some lightly philosophical byways, is that the father seems almost as broken as the android.
Soon after the movie opens, Yang (Justin H. Min) shuts down, following an amusing, wittily staged and shot family dance contest. A so-called technosapien with a human countenance and — like the people in his life — the tamped-down affect of someone who needs to cut down on his antidepressants, Yang was bought by Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) to care for their young daughter, Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja). Yang teaches Mika, who was adopted from China, about her heritage, rattling off “Chinese fun facts.” He’s also there for her when she wakes up in the middle of the night.
Repairing Yang proves unsurprisingly more challenging than poking around under the hood of a car. Yang is a secondhand model, “certified refurbished,” yet used nevertheless. And while his warranty is still valid, the store where he was procured, Second Siblings, is out of business. “I told you we should have just bought a new one,” Kyra chides Jake with the old I-told-you-so sigh. In the future, men still take care of the big household chores; wives berate their husbands for making foolish decisions; and some families live in swoon-worthy houses with floor-to-ceiling windows and open-floor plans.
Kogonada (“Columbus”) has a fondness for 20th-century modernist architecture and a skill for creating a countervailing air of claustrophobia. Much of “After Yang” takes place in Jake and Kyra’s home, a handsome maze of glass that suggests a transparency unmatched by the family’s relationships: There’s no oversharing here. In some scenes, the glass frames the characters as if they were pictures, much like the display boxes in which Yang exhibited his butterfly collection. Throughout, including in the house and costume design, with its robes and black slip-on shoes, there are distinct, meaningful Asian influences and flourishes.
The tomorrow of “After Yang” is casually multicultural, visually detailed and at times thematically and frustratingly elusive. The expressive production design mixes old and new, organic and tech, like the surprising bits of wood and green plants inside the family’s driverless vehicle, a pod that suggests a moving terrarium. The family itself always seems caught in a bubble, despite sporadic trips outside and views of their unnamed city, with its dense foliage and far-out buildings. If climate change is a problem you wouldn’t know it, though there’s plenty of grim news cluttering up a bulletin board in a repair shop Jake visits.
That bulletin board and the racist anti-Asian messages pinned to it are in the original story, which is set in Detroit and invokes that city’s violent past. Kogonada adds more items to the board, notably headlines referring to a decades-long war and clashes between China and the United States. But the close-up of the board lasts only seconds and its contents are easy to miss. Then it’s back to Jake’s repair journey, a quest that leads increasingly inward. Yet there’s more to this quest than might appear because along the way Kogonada is upending the noxious stereotype of the “stoic” Asian, a familiar cliché, including in science fiction.
The effort to fix Yang gives the movie its narrative spine and slow-building emotional punch. Particularly potent is Jake’s discovery of Yang’s memories, which are initially represented as pinpricks of light. Using a viewer, Jake narrows in on different pinpricks, which then expand until they fill the frame, becoming movies-within-the-movie that he can freeze and replay. Some memories last only as long as it takes for a friend of Yang’s, Ada (Haley Lu Richardson), to turn to the camera with a searching look. Others seem like excerpts from a series of disconnected stories, an assemblage of opening, middle and concluding paragraphs that together create a mosaic portrait of Yang that eventually changes Jake.
As Yang emerges more clearly, so does Jake. Farrell is the most experienced performer in the main cast, and he’s able to create depths of feeling — as well a sense of untapped mystery — within the largely unmodulated expressive range that Kogonada favors, at times to a fault. With eyebrow flicks, tiny physical modulations and shifts in pitch, Farrell movingly turns a shadow into a recognizable person, while also bringing much-needed humor to the movie. Min has the trickier, less-satisfying role — he is, after all, playing an android — but he does what needs to be done: He makes you see, really see Yang as he was, alive to the world and to love.
After Yang
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and on Showtime platforms.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
