After Yang
2021
**
Director: Kogonada
Cast: Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, Justin H. Min, Haley Lu Richardson, Sarita Choudhury, Ritchie Coster, Clifton Collins Jr., Brett Dier, Ava DeMary
Jake and Kyra, their adopted daughter Mika, and their android companion Yang live as a family. When Yang breaks down and Jake attempts to have him repaired, he discovers fragments of Yang’s recorded memories. Kogonada's debut feature, Columbus, was a likeable but ultimately dull study of emotional isolation and family obligation. His follow-up is a science fiction-tinged family drama based on Alexander Weinstein's 2016 short story Saying Goodbye to Yang. The film asks what it means to be alive, to love, and to remember, but I found it stylistically alienating and, frankly, insufferable. Nearly every scene unfolds in artistically underlit rooms, where lifeless, uninteresting characters, often shot from a distance, whisper their dialogue against a backdrop of ethereal, tinkly piano music by Aska Matsumiya and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
