Film Review: AFTER YANG: Director Kogonada’s Science Fiction Film is Well Made but Ultimately Underwhelms [Sundance 2022]

After Yang Review

After Yang (2021) Film Review from the 44th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Kogonada and starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, Justin H. Min, Haley Lu Richardson, Orlagh Cassidy, Ritchie Coster, Sarita Choudhury, Clifton Collins Jr., Ava DeMary, Adeline Kerns, Ansley Kerns, Brett Dier, Eve Lindley, Nana Mensah, An-Li Bogan and Deborah Hedwall.

When the very talented filmmaker Kogonada made the 2017 masterpiece Columbus, he was instantly crowned a film-making genius by the indie movie crowd. His new film, After Yang, is an OK film but also lacks much of the competence of his earlier picture. This new picture certainly has a unique story line but the execution remains lacking in terms of the script and direction. Still, visually speaking, After Yang has many pluses and the emotions towards the end of the movie are well conveyed by the actors in the film even if the movie feels as if it has at least twenty five minutes yet to come when the credits roll. That’s the main problem with Kogonada’s latest picture. In Columbus, a movie driven by character interaction, the director never sold his audience short. Here, it’s like the premise is our reward and our expectations that it will go somewhere exceptional are never met.

Set some time in the future, Colin Farrell stars as a family man who owns a tea store named Jake who is married to Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith). The couple have an adopted Chinese daughter Mika (played by the absolutely terrific young actress Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) and an A.I. brother named Yang (Justin H. Min). This new picture opens splendidly with an online dance competition that the family is participating in as the credits are displayed to the audience. At this point, I thought that Kogonada will probably outdo himself with this new picture because the opening is so creative and unique. Unfortunately, the film fails to live up to the promise set by the beginning.

Yang short circuits and since he’s become like a member of the family, Jake sets out on a mission to find a way to bring Yang back. As the plot progresses, he looks to see where Mika’s “brother” was purchased. It could seemingly be a place called Brothers and Sisters because the A.I. model was actually refurbished. Soon, it becomes clear that selected memories of Yang can be obtained and it seems that Yang loved his family. There are also memories of a girl/barista named Ada (Haley Lu Richardson of Columbus who is given precious little to do here) which leads Jake to want to learn more about Yang and his past.

Yang is officially known as a technosapien. As Jake tries to fix him, the audience anticipates that the film will take us places that are going to be emotionally moving. However, the film stays grounded for the most part and lets the images speak for themselves and some of them don’t really progress the plot forward. There are also conversations about fixing Yang, spyware and the cost of possibly bringing Yang back but the best the movie can ultimately muster up is making Yang’s memories so precious that they must be held in an A.I. museum.

Maybe I’m being too hard on After Yang. That’s because I have seen Columbus and know what the director Kogonada is capable of. His previous film was so full of depth and the images were combined beautifully with the characterizations. Farrell is just going through the motions here but as his daughter, Tjandrawidjaja is so good that we truly feel for her and want to see Yang come back in order to make her happy. Mika has developed such an attachment to Yang that she is yearning for him to return to her family and has a hard time imagining her family without him. Although Mika is only seen briefly with Yang, her attachment to him is affecting.

Also in the supporting cast is Sarita Choudhury as the museum worker who suggests that Yang’s memories be made available to everyone who is interested in learning about them. Choudhury has a short role in the movie but she nevertheless does a fairly good job. Richardson is so underused, however, though the little screen time she has is effective despite the fact that it comes really late in the picture. As Jake’s wife, Turner-Smith has some strong scenes opposite Farrell that help give the movie depth but not enough to make it work as well as it would like to.

The premise of After Yang is truly inspired. This film needed more substance even though a director like Steven Spielberg got away with his own shortcomings in the much better Hollywood film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. In After Yang, I truly enjoyed the idea the film proposed but it gets bogged down in scenes that don’t propel the movie to a compelling conclusion. That said, if you go in with lower expectations, the movie does provide some thought-provoking sequences and a few emotional scenes.

There are directors whose work I will watch no matter what they do. Sofia Coppola is one of them. Kogonada is, without a doubt, another one. After Yang is an exercise in style over substance but is certainly not a bad film by any means. It’s thought-provoking and has some real meat on its thematic bones but at the end of the film, viewers may want a bit more. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but when you have a cast and director of this caliber, viewers have come to expect greatness. This film is merely OK.

Rating: 6.5/10

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