“After Yang” Review: What Makes Someone Asian?
Kogonada’s second feature film explores death, memory, and what it means to have an identity.
I didn’t go into “After Yang” expecting a meditation on Chinese heritage. After all, it’s branded as a sci-fi family drama starring Collin Farrell. But in his sophomore outing, Korean-American director Kogonada has crafted a careful contemplation on identity that perhaps even trumps his critically lauded debut, “Columbus.”
With “After Yang,” Kogonada continues the grief-filtered dissection of what it means to be Asian and Asian-American that he began with “Columbus”. While “Columbus” was perhaps a little simpler in the way it presented Asian grief, focusing on a subdued stoicism, “After Yang” sees Kogonada flipping the script. We don’t get to see the Asian man grieving in this film. Instead, we find ourselves grieving for him, all the while confronting our perceptions on ethnicity and personal identity.
Adapted from a short story by Alexander Weinstein, “After Yang” follows tea seller Jake (Farrell) and his family after their android shuts down. Yang (Justin H. Min), a “cultural technosapien,” was bought to connect the family’s adopted Chinese daughter, Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) with her roots. It’s soon made clear he can’t be rebooted. And when an illegal memory capture device is found in Yang, the family begins mourning him in ways beyond what you’d expect for a decomissioned piece of tech.
While Weinstein’s original story hits those same first few narrative beats, it’s Kogonada’s added exploration of memories that really drives most of the film’s 95-minute runtime. It’s in what Yang and the family deem worthy of remembering that the examination of what it means to have an identity come into focus. The film repeatedly questions what the determiner of heritage is. Is it knowledge? Appearance? Experience?
In a poignant scene halfway through the film, Jake and Yang discuss the ineffable nature of the taste of tea, how it can only be tied to memory and imagery. That’s when I found myself ndding along. Growing up in China, I can’t remember when I didn’t know the taste of tea. It was a staple of almost every meal in my childhood. Even now, on my occasional trips to Chinatown, a full kettle is always on the table, waiting to remind me of sick days, visits to my grandparents’ house, and nights when I couldn’t fall asleep. Yang doesn’t have that. “I wish I had a real memory of tea in China. Of a place. Of a time,” he says. Though by all accounts Yang appears Chinese (he constantly teaches Mika “Chinese fun facts”), he lacks the experiences one would typically expect a Chinese man to have. Does that mean he’s not Chinese? Kogonada certainly doesn’t expect an answer. He seems more interested in throwing questions at the audience rather than making us agree with him. After all, a character asks with twenty minutes left of the runtime: “what makes someone Asian?”
On a technical level, every aspect of “After Yang” seems crafted to hint at its Chinese undercurrents and produce these questions, although it’s never so heavyhanded that you’re conscious of its effort. The film’s refusal to force answers creates a sense of inaction, reflecting the characters frozen in grief they don’t understand. Inaction, being a core tenet of Taoism, is perhaps most representative of Kogonada’s creative talents (Yang makes several references to Lao Tzu throughout the film and is also named after the Yin-Yang principle central to the philosophy). Alongside cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, Kogonada is able to manipulate the camera in such a way that the majority of the frame is always still. There is so little information being thrown at us that all we can do is ask questions and think about the ones asked by the characters.
This stillness is reflected in the acting as well. Farrell, known recently for his understated melancholy in films like “The Lobster” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” is perhaps at his subtlest here. Min commands the screen with his empathetic yet mechanically blank disposition, never speaking louder than needed for the person next to him to hear what he has to say. Jodie Turner-Smith who plays Mika’s mother, turns in a performance filled with frustration that never boils past the surface.
But the standout here is Tjandrawidjaja, who makes her debut in this film. Next to a veteran like Farrell, she doesn’t disappoint, which is shocking because she probably has the hardest job. She needs to offer an innocent but ultimately devastating look into the soul of a child that’s lost her only tangible connection to her heritage. But every simplistic “gege” (“brother”) that’s uttered is absolutely gut-wrenching.
I’d be remiss if I neglected to mention how gorgeous this movie is. The colors used to delineate the present and memory are once again subtle, but serve as a visual treat for the eyes. The futuristic production design with its combination of the mechanical and natural create a world that’s just familiar enough to relate to but foreign enough to critically question.
It’s a shame that “After Yang” didn’t get a wider theatrical release and it’s not available to stream for free. In a world where we’re so quick to put a label on ourselves so as to find an identity to belong to, it might do us some good to look back, wait on the answers, and ask some questions.
