After Yang

Writer/director/editor Kogonada

AFTER YANG          B                                                                                                                USA  (96 mi)  2021  ‘Scope  d: Kogonada

I don’t mind if there isn’t anything in the end.             —Yang (Justin H. Min)

A somewhat confusing yet immaculately produced new work by Korean-American film essayist turned director Kogonada, which is about as far removed as possible from the lyrical naturalism of 2017 Top Ten List #5 Columbus, failing miserably at the box office, released at the height of the Covid pandemic when movie theaters were largely empty.  Based on Alexander Weinstein’s short story, Saying Goodbye to Yang, a collection of science fiction stories from his 2016 book Children of the New World, what jumpstarted the idea is something we’ve all been victim of at some point in time, that deafening moment when our computer died, taking with it years of contacts and creative output, instantly cut off from the outside world, when all suddenly goes silent.  It’s a rare feeling, as if left on an island, when life strangely appears quite different.  You might even say it feels like a death in the family.  Written about the same time that people were getting iPhones, expressing how much they loved them, becoming invested and attached to something they don’t really understand, where one gets the sense that people were all starting to forge this very deep emotional connection with technology.  Anyone who grew up watching people stare for hours at TV screens, constantly warned of the dangers this poses for children, can identify with the obsessional nature of people glued to this smaller screen that anyone can carry around in their pocket, with so many kids unable to part with their phones in school, where there is a looming question about our overreliance on technology.  Originally screening at Un Certain Regard in the Covid-delayed Cannes Festival in 2021, before screening again six months later at Sundance in January 2022, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan science award, it feels like a pandemic film, written and edited by Kogonada, shot in ‘Scope by Benjamin Loeb, appearing overly dark and somber, exploring a virtual reality existence, yet the dialogue is soft and meditative, exuding gentleness and a quiet introspection, with a seemingly joyless yet probing message of sadness that uses artificial intelligence to question human existence.  Posing big existential questions, many that were asked fifty years ago by the sci-fi android classic written by Philip K. Dick in 1968, (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), or before that in the 1942 classic I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov that forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence (A.I.), the characters seem to drift through this film in a sluggish melancholy, where the overall sense of detachment can feel overly oppressive, reminiscent of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, like The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), which also featured Colin Farrell.  However there’s also a mesmerizing sense of wonderment in the spectacular use of location, the Eichler House on the outskirts of New York City (East Coast Eichler Home by Jones and Emmons), with its glass windows, where the lavish designer home set decoration by Joanne Ling and production design by Alexandra Schaller are nothing less than stunning, where the East Asian influence is evident, exuding a Zen tranquility.  It’s a strange tale taking place somewhere between 20 to 30 years in the future, with minimal clues provided, following a young mixed race, middle-class couple whose robotic “technosapian” member Yang (Justin H. Min) has suddenly gone dead, forcing the family to come to terms with an irreparable malfunction, becoming an elegiac study of loss and alienation, evolving into a meditative and melancholic inquiry into what it means to be human, looking inward, exploring memories that make life worth living, while at the same time becoming an allegory for the Asian-American experience. 

Existing somewhere in the same android universe as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015), and Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime (2017), where artificial life forms intersect with human existence, the most unique twist, however, may come from the film’s resemblance to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (Wandafuru raifu) (1998), where memories can be turned on and off by command through a visualization of cyberspace, opening up doors to a virtual reality universe.  A photography sequence leads into an enthralling, high-energy dance number playing through the opening credits that offers a glimpse of the cast, After Yang (2021) title sequence YouTube (3:37), as Kyra (black actress Jodie Turner-Smith) and Jake (Colin Farrell) are two working parents using a “cultural techno,” or refurbished android Yang to help familiarize their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) with her native Chinese culture, using him in the role of big brother, babysitter, and storehouse of cultural knowledge all in one, with hopes of connecting Mika with her heritage by providing “Chinese fun facts.”  But Yang suddenly stops working, leaving Mika emotionally devastated, as she’s actually much closer to Yang than her more distant parents.  Largely told through Jake, who is worn down and emotionally detached, seemingly going through the motions, avoiding his sense of paternal responsibility, allowing Yang to intervene in his behalf, but when Yang shuts down, he mostly seems inconvenienced, viewing this as just another problem he has to deal with, already feeling overburdened, yet when we see him working in his artisanal tea shop, there are no customers, as he’s losing business rapidly over a failure to convert to the more popular “tea crystals,” deluding himself into believing he’s always busy.  Not only does he have to figure out how to turn Yang back on, but also explain to his daughter why he is missing.  While he’s not that emotionally invested with Yang, what really stresses him out is how to carry out his new responsibilities, something he’s completely unfamiliar with, while the more scientifically rational Kyra has a sensible view, thinking they’ve been overly reliant upon Yang, hoping this may bring them closer together as a family.  No longer under warranty, repair is an expensive proposition, as the original business that sold Yang is gone, with companies instead offering to recycle him, like an older-model smartphone, discovering a Kafkaesque labyrinth of corporate disinterest where everything is disposable, so Jake turns to an underground black market repairman named Russ (Ritchie Coster), an eccentric fringe character who illegally breaks into Yang’s core, reporting he can’t be fixed, while also discovering what may be a malicious surveillance device, adding a conspiracy aspect of Big Brother paranoia, with weird elements of racism creeping in.  Out of a sense of desperation, Jake takes Yang to the Museum of Technology, where Cleo (Sarita Choudhury), the museum curator and A.I. historian, explains that what he discovered is not a surveillance mechanism, but Yang’s database of recorded memories, opening up a flood of new information that Jake accesses through virtual reality glasses, plunging into the unexplored realms of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt)  (1991), which accentuates the technological visualization of dreams, where brainwaves are sculpted into a new kind of cinematic awareness, plunging into the depths of the subconsciousness, creating a kaleidoscope of intersecting forms and shapes and colors.  As Kogonada carefully weaves between the present and the past, memories in this film evoke a time-traveling aura moving back and forth in time, changing with each human host, who recalibrates them in their own unique way. 

By shifting the focus onto Yang’s memories, the film accentuates a different journey, expressed through a first person perspective, where the formalized cyberspace aesthetic is given a breathtaking presentation, largely attributed to visual effects artist Raoul Marx who works with Antibody, Yang's Memories Scene from AFTER YANG YouTube (5:19).  The imagery, combined with the memories Yang chose to keep, make these sequences more touching, unlocking certain mysteries about his past that were unknown to his family, taking us into unexpected places, like where Yang came from, which has a way of humanizing him.  Jake discovers Yang’s romantic interest with an enigmatic young woman at the center of his memories named Ada (Hayley Lu Richardson, who literally breathes life into this film), something no one even knew was even possible, adding another layer of human incomprehension, which only deepens the mystery.  Tracking her down from Yang’s memories, Jake tries to fathom who he really was, wondering whether he felt slighted by his limitations, with Ada (a human clone), already upset at his loss, adding bluntly, “That’s such a human thing to ask.  We always assume that other beings would want to be human.  What’s so great about being human?”  Yang couldn’t know what it is to be human, but he developed a meaningful sense of connection, to moments, people, places and things, which incites Jake’s philosophical search for meaning, confronting his own mortality, ultimately lifting him out of the dreariness of his own life.  At one point Mika, who has a habit of getting up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, surprises Jake watching Yang’s memories, and asks, “Are you watching a film?”  When he replies that he is, not only is Jake having a personal and epiphanic experience, but by watching the film, so are we.  There’s a discussion between Yang and Jake about why he has such a particular fascination with tea, seen through the eyes of Yang, which captures an opening into a completely different world, expressed through spoken dialogue repeating itself, but with a different delivery, offering a slightly different perspective.  One is how Jake remembers it, but the other is Yang’s objective reality, taking a single memory but elevating it into something more dramatically impactful.  As he delves deeper into Yang’s memories, where the compositions are just stunning, he discovers an entire life lived with a previous owner, and yet another one before that when he first met the original Ada, who has gone through her own transformations, as that first owner had children, grandchildren, and eventually died of old age, After Yang (2022) - Original Ada Memory - YouTube (3:27).  These are memories that Yang refused to let go of, having a significant meaning for him that was completely undetected by either owner, with suggestions that artificial intelligence may have a consciousness.  The unraveling of these memories plays out like Tarkovsky’s MIRROR (1975), where even the verdant setting along a fence near a wood looks exactly the same, as you see the prior family playfully running along a pathway, followed by the exact same setting with the people missing, where the emptiness is starkly moving, tapping into the same territory as Kieślowski’s THREE COLORS: BLUE (1993), becoming an enduring portrait of loneliness and grief.  He’s able to see not only Yang’s life through his eyes, but also his own life through Yang’s eyes, giving him more of an appreciation for his own family.  Kyra has her own experiences with Yang, After Yang - What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly (Lao Tzu) YouTube (4:21), while this also extends to Mika, who is bullied in school for not having “real” parents, so in a “grafting scene,” Yang shows her a botanical technique of combining different roots and branches to create a new plant, as Yang attempts to explain how an extended family has their own interconnectedness, much like trees and plants in nature, which helps her come to terms with being adopted.  When she responds that some limbs are held together by tape, this is a reference to Yang’s own unnatural artificiality, yet he has a unique ability to bring this family closer together.  Pondering his own place in America’s racial landscape, Kogonada brilliantly captures this diasporic condition in Yang’s duality as a Chinese A.I. in a multiracial family.  There is a piano-centered score by Japanese composer Aska Matsumiya (ASKA), supported by the legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto, while also re-introducing a song from Shunji Iwai’s ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU (2001), which happens to be Yang and Mika’s favorite song, an endearing part of Japanese pop culture, covered by biracial Japanese-American musician Mitski, Mitski - Glide (cover) (Official Audio) - YouTube (3:41), with the song echoing their hidden interiority, with Mika speaking an untranslated Mandarin saying her final goodbye in Yang’s empty room, a nod to that final goodbye sequence in Edward Yang’s Yi Yi: A One and a Two... (2000).  

Ex Machina

EX MACHINA                      B+                  

Great Britain  (108 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Alex Garland     Official Facebook                              

As the author of The Beach, a 1996 cult novel that became a motion picture, also the writer of Danny Boyle’s highly inventive zombie thriller 28 DAYS LATER…(2002), the futuristic space adventure SUNSHINE (2007), but also the sci-fi box office disaster DREDD (2012), all depictions of humans on the brink of survival, often expressed through a bleak, post-apocalyptic vision where scientific progress imprisons and dehumanizes people as much as it liberates them and expands their potential, Alex Garland’s first venture into writing and directing has led him surprisingly to an A-list of actors to work with.  Exploring the idea of an early era of artificial intelligence, the film raises ethical questions about the rights of sentient androids created under a corporate banner that for all practical purposes “owns” them, capable of making modifications and updates, perhaps against the expressed wishes of the creatures themselves who have no say in the matter, but are completely owned and controlled by their creators, despite having feelings and a will of their own, in the process questioning our own idea of humanity, where the real monster is man and not the machine.  In a sense, this is a bit like the John Hughes teen comedy WEIRD SCIENCE (1985) where a couple of nerdy social misfits astoundingly create an ideal dream woman from their computers, one that supposedly meets their idea of perfection, where in each case, it’s hard for these men not to fall uncontrollably in love with their invention, modeling them, after all, to serve their every need.  Scarlett Johansson played a sexy computer operating system in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) using just her voice, programmed to sound warm and compassionate, but that didn’t stop Joaquin Phoenix from falling in love with his computer.  This is a variation on that male fantasy, where what happens, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that these artificial creatures have a mind of their own, separate and distinct from their creators, as expressed by the dying and about to expire replicants in Blade Runner (1982), but also the ever expanding mental capacities of Johansson’s artificial intelligence, who never sleeps, by the way, demonstrating she’s capable of maintaining multiple relationships at once, each one more complex than the next in search of higher forms of consciousness, literally leaving humans behind on their evolutionary trajectory.  While the androids have a desperate desire to save themselves, even to get in touch with their own soul, if that’s possible, humans are still bogged down in relatively minor details, at the dawn of a new age of scientific invention, with little comprehension about playing God or crossing any real moral boundaries.  To the film’s credit, it doesn’t minimize any of these issues, a throwback to Fritz Lang’s science-fiction classic METROPOLIS (1927), which featured an erotic female robot that drove men wild with passion, eventually instilling chaos in contemporary society, a cautionary tale about the crushing power of modern industrial life where the presence of a robot created in a heavily stylized human form was a jarring experience.  This film is modeled in that image, but on a much smaller scale in a more intimate setting, concentrating on a secret introductory project of unleashing artificial intelligence into the world while still in the early experimental stages.  While the title refers to a plot device known as “deus ex machina,” which literally means “god from the machine,” where an object magically solves an impossible problem in the narrative, the origin comes from Greek tragedy where a machine is used to bring actors playing gods onto the stage, often with mythological implications, a perfect example being Icarus flying too close to the sun, with this invention in the film being described as Promethean, literally bringing something from the gods down to earth, for which they will pay an eternal price.      

Something of a reinvention of Mary Shelley’s early 19th century Frankenstein story, perhaps the essence of the film is how complex thought is wrapped in such simplicity and sleek elegance, where the reliance upon such technical detail never feels over the viewer’s head, but is presented in a highly appealing manner set in one of the most extraordinary locations on earth.  From the outset we are introduced to a relatively low-ranking computer programmer in a large corporation, Caleb Smith, played by Domhnall Gleeson from Calvary (2014) and 2014 Top Ten List #10 Frank , also Shadow Dancer (2012), and before that an earlier Garland script NEVER LET ME GO (2010), which was actually written before the Kazuo Ishiguro novel upon which it was based was even published.  Caleb works for Bluebook, the world’s largest Internet search engine, where he’s been selected as the lottery prize-winner among company staff to win a week in an undisclosed remote location in Alaska with the company’s founder and CEO, Nathan Bateman, Oscar Isaac from A Most Violent Year (2014) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2012), the reclusive billionaire genius who wrote the code that launched his career success when he was only 13, retreating to the wilds of Alaska and has barely been seen or heard from since.  Flying by helicopter over mountainous terrain (actually shot in Norway), Caleb is surprised to discover it’s all Nathan’s land they’ve been traversing for the past two hours, dropping him off in the middle of an open field where he’ll be retrieved exactly one week later.  Following a river to an opulent, ultra-modern architectural dream home that is fully automated, installed with the latest hi-tech security systems, with Schubert and Bach playing on his sound system and Jackson Pollock and Gustav Klimt paintings hanging on his walls, blending uniquely into its natural surroundings with wall-sized glass windows, while also serving as his own private research facility, Nathan lives a solitary life attended to only by the enigmatic presence of silent house maid named Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), who supposedly doesn’t speak English.  The reason for Caleb’s visit, where he was actually chosen for being the most talented coder in the company, is to evaluate a female robot Nathan designed with artificial intelligence, giving her the Turing test, designed by British genius Alan Turing from The Imitation Game (2014), where his job will be to determine if the android is indistinguishable from a human being, calling the experiment, somewhat modestly, “the greatest scientific event in the history of man.”   Named Ava, Alicia Vikander from Pure (Till det som är vackert)  (2009) and A Royal Affair (En kongelig affære) (2012), she utilizes her ballerina training by the gracefully fluid and agile manner in which she moves, while also being coy, impassive, and shyly demure, bringing a tender humanity to the character, where it’s often easy to forget she is playing a machine.  Whether in METROPOLIS or a recent film like Under the Skin (2013), for a hundred years the futuristic, science fiction element has allowed women to be viewed as an unknowable, alien presence.  Both emboldened by the opportunity, each daily visit holds a certain amount of suspense, because they are infrequent and limited in scope, each one entitled “Ava: Session 1,” etc.  She is, of course, surprised to see him, as she’s never seen anyone but Nathan before.  Thrown into the mix are blackout periods at the compound when the power inexplicably turns off, whereupon all doors are immediately locked until power can be resumed a short period afterwards, where Garland bathes the screen in a red light, creating a chilling atmospheric mood of dread and suspense.  During these blackouts, Nathan has no access to the sessions that he otherwise observes and records, where Ava uses one of these moments to warn Caleb not to trust Nathan, describing him as dangerous.  Isaac plays him as a larger-than-life character with secret motives, a mad genius hiding his real intentions as he controls everything within the confines of his home, overseeing all, playing God, so to speak, where despite his friendly hospitality and outwardly gregarious nature, both Caleb and Ava see themselves as little more than lab rats within his locked compound.    

In keeping with the futuristic aspects of the story, one of the keys to the film is the ultra-modernistic setting combined with such a cold, abstract interior design, adding a formal precision that just happens to be the Juvet Landscape Hotel, The Hotel - Juvet, an utterly spectacular Norwegian hotel that is one of the architectural wonders of the world, with a minimalistic, state-of-the-art design that continually exposes the majestic splendor of the unspoiled naturalistic world outdoors.  This extraordinary partition of a separate indoor and outdoor existence couldn’t be more pronounced, a mirror image of their own existence, where Caleb is shocked to discover Kyoko is an earlier test product, where she curiously seems programmed to provide Nathan with whatever he wants, something of a sex toy, an expression of male arrogance and ego, leading to creepy thoughts that become even more disgusting when he’s willing to share her with Caleb, but the unseen parallel story is a rat in a maze that can never escape captivity, as neither Ava nor Kyoko have ever been outside or allowed to leave their perpetual confinement of living behind glass walls.  Caleb naturally begins to feel empathy for their plight, believing they’re being mistreated, as underneath their robotic perfection, doing and saying all the things they have been programmed to do, they are deathly afraid of Nathan.  During another blackout that she has actually learned to create, Ava reveals her underlying fears of what might happen to her if she fails to pass the test, as she might be switched off for an upgrade.  Caleb begins questioning his own existence, wondering if he’s being programmed by Nathan as well, where Isaac and Vikander are both truly remarkable in the scope of their performances, conveying secret worlds of untapped motives and possibilities that remain hidden beneath the surface, challenging the audience to identify with a computer-programmed robot.  Who’s to say one is better than or inferior from another?  They are simply placed in different circumstances, where the story revolves around the lives of the three main characters, and to a smaller degree the fourth, where the brilliance of the film is that it reveals the Turing test for what it is, a test of the humans and not the machine.  Even Nathan envisions a future where the humans will be at the mercy of the machines, who will be so much faster and smarter, able to self-repair and live without sleep, illness, or aging, where they can literally live forever.  This understanding, however, leads to his security fears and overcontrolling nature, where he continues to tinker with what he’s created, where he feels introducing A.I. robots is an inevitable part of the human condition, that if he didn’t create them then someone else would.  It’s a fascinating balance of power between the main participants, constantly fluctuating in each scene, becoming a story of deceit, obsession, and manipulation, where the director himself never gives away his true intentions, which keeps the viewer off guard, where the less one knows, the better the experience.  The familiar aspect of these stories is attributing human traits to computers, where they are not simply content to serve humans any more than Scarlett Johansson is in Her, or your pet dog would be, as there’s simply more to a happy and fulfilling life.  Exploring human consciousness through a science fiction narrative has always held a certain mysterious intrigue both in literature and film, where Vikander’s beguiling beauty as Ava has an undeniable femme fatale appeal, complete with all the noirish trappings, where you might get sucked down the proverbial rabbit hole if you’re not careful.  The darkening mood throughout is unsettling and eventually disturbing, veering into horror territory, where the expanse of Nathan’s secret hideaway and the suffocating confinement within is an extension of his own flawed character, beautifully filmed by Rob Hardy, while the throbbing musical score by Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow underscores the enveloping claustrophobia, where the subject being explored is the mystery of the human condition, equally baffling whether seen through a computer or a human vantage point, where by the end they are seamlessly blended into one.     

To his credit, Garland enlisted Murray Shanahan (Home - Professor Murray Shanahan), Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London, and writer and geneticist Adam Rutherford as science advisers.  Paul Smith interviews Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak from The Australian Financial Review Weekend, March 24, 2015, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on the Apple Watch ...:

  

“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question,” Mr Wozniak said.

He said he had long dismissed the ideas of writers like Raymond Kurzweil, who have warned that rapid increases in technology will mean machine intelligence will outstrip human understanding or capability within the next 30 years.  However Mr Wozniak said he had come to recognise that the predictions were coming true, and that computing that perfectly mimicked or attained human consciousness would become a dangerous reality.

“Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people.  If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they’ll think faster than us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently,” Mr Wozniak said.

“Will we be the gods?  Will we be the family pets?  Or will we be ants that get stepped on?  I don’t know about that … But when I got that thinking in my head about if I’m going to be treated in the future as a pet to these smart machines … well I’m going to treat my own pet dog really nice.”