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).  

Happy End

Director Michael Haneke on the set with actress Fantine Harduin and actor Jean-Louis Trintingant

HAPPY END             B                    

France  Austria  Germany  (107 mi)  2017 d:  Michael Haneke     Official site [United States]

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

—opening line from Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, 1878 

Taking place against the backdrop of rapid economic transformation, globalization has provided a comfortable bourgeois class that remains safely secluded from any of the real problems the rest of the world faces, yet wealth brings its own set of problems, as the film depicts a scathing portrait of emptiness and social malaise, where one-by-one the skeletons in the dysfunctional family closet are crudely revealed.  Recalling similar scenes from Benny's Video (1992), with an eerie mood established reminiscent of Caché (Hidden) (2005), the opening live-streaming video scenes shot on a smartphone amount to a snuff film, with the unseen user expressing their thoughts via text messages that appear on the bottom of the screen, remarking upon the utter contempt this person has for their mother, filming an experiment, first feeding a pet hamster food mixed with the mother’s anti-depression medicine, showing how easy it is to kill an unsuspecting animal — Voilà, apparently proud of the results.  Taking the experiment a step further, the camera shows a comatose mother being led away by a team of paramedics, with the user implicated in her poisoning.  What follows is security camera footage of a disastrous workplace accident occurring on a construction site, with one of the immigrant workers seriously injured, where the prognosis does not look good.  Haneke transitions to an affluent family having dinner at their palatial estate, with African colonial servants at their beck and call, including the aging patriarch, Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintingant), former owner of the construction firm, his workaholic daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert), who has taken over running the business, her pampered, overly fragile son Pierre (Franz Rogowski), who is being groomed to take over the business, yet may be responsible for the work accident, her brother Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz) and his wife Anaїs (Laura Verlinden) with a newborn baby, where it’s his ex-wife in the hospital from a mysterious poisoning, a presumed suicide attempt, and a new arrival Eve (Fantine Harduin), a lonely, left out 13-year old sent to live under the care of her estranged father Thomas, as her mother is in a coma, attaching an identity to those opening scenes.  With all the players introduced, what we quickly realize is that each avoids the others, with everyone lurking in their own private space, yet the language used is one of politeness and décor, so as not to alarm anyone.  Apparently the biggest sin is the expression of any anxiety, as wealth produces privacy, where all emotion is suppressed, minimized, and for the most part avoided at all costs.  This is the closeted world of their existence, like living in a protective bubble that refuses to allow the rest of the world in. 

Little by little secrets are revealed, as Anne’s relationship to her son Pierre is broken, as he feels useless and unwanted, never able to live up to Mommy’s expectations, always perceived as a failure.  The more emphatically she denies these simple truths, the more they are evident, especially to Pierre, who takes his failures wherever he goes.  In a distant shot we see him at the front door of the tenement building where the injured worker lives, which he strangely decides to visit, perhaps out of guilt, maybe offering money, only to get roughed up by a family member and sent away in disgrace, later rescued by his mother who finds him hiding in an empty apartment.  In a deplorable gesture, he refers to the household cook Jamila (Nabiha Akkari) as “our Moroccan slave,” while in another drunken display, we see his pathetic attempt to sing karaoke, turning into one of the more bizarre scenes of the film set to the sounds of Sia’s Chandelier, happy end (2017) chandelier - sia (hipnotik) - YouTube (1:50), raging out of control, “I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist,” where he very nearly injures himself.  Not to be outdone, Thomas is involved in his own illicit affair, where we watch him text various S/M style fantasies on his laptop to a secret lover, who turns out to be a classical cellist, descending into a lecherous world of salacious sex, obviously something he doesn’t share with his own wife.  On a trip to the beach, Eve overhears one of these phone conversations, becoming suspicious he and his wife are about to break up, leaving her future in limbo.  Out of curiosity, and panic, she hacks into his computer and finds all the prurient messages, sending her over the edge, taking the rest of her mother’s pills in a blatant suicide attempt, telling her father afterwards what she’d discovered, accusing him of not being able to love anyone, certainly not her mother, Anaïs, or herself, leaving Thomas shocked into silence and disbelief.  Shortly afterwards Eve’s mother dies from the poisoning.  In one of the more antiseptic scenes, viewed inside a window-lined, executive boardroom, Anne and her lawyer are seen offering money to the family of the accident victim, which seems a small price to pay for a human life, yet it’s presented as a means to silence them and prevent them from suing for larger damages, threatening to press charges for the assault on Pierre if they don’t accept.  This typifies business transactions in the modern era, as it’s all designed to protect the interests of the wealthy class, taking no responsibility at all for their own callous indifference, showing little regard for the actual victims harmed along the way, who are viewed as collateral damage, part of the price of doing business. 

Haneke has always taken an unusual interest in technological advances, showing how easily people are both fascinated, perhaps even obsessed, yet also manipulated or harmed by seemingly insignificant actions, like leaving anonymous videotapes at the front door of a middle class home in Caché (Hidden) (2005), or rewinding the tape, preventing a heroine’s escape, suggesting an even more heinous ending in Funny Games (1997), with this film expressing voyeuristic tendencies through YouTube, Facebook, G-mail, and Snapchat social media platforms, mimicking the interest of the public, where just this past year a Facebook user livestreamed a murder (Facebook Streams a Murder in Cleveland, and Must Now Face Itself ...), where privacy and the anonymity of the user allows cruelty to evolve into something far darker into virtual reality fantasies that come to life, something suggested a decade earlier in the nightmarish finale of Assayas’s Demonlover (2002).  This film rises to new heights in a sinister conversation between Eve and her grandfather Georges.  Not since Bud Cort in HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971) have we had a character who so desperately wants to die, which seems to plague the thoughts of Georges throughout the film, having slipped out of the home in an earlier failed suicide attempt, running his car into a tree, leaving him instead with broken bones, confined to a wheelchair, but very much alive.  Their conversation is a remarkably candid and unfiltered discussion of suicide, with each revealing the kind of secrets few ever actually experience.  You can hear a pin drop in the theater, as this creates a hushed intensity level, bringing what was once considered taboo to the screen.  According to Haneke, Michael Haneke: 'I don't have time to waste on social media', this is based on his own experience with a 92-year old aunt who asked for his help with an assisted suicide.  When he declined, she was disappointed with him afterwards and carried it out herself weeks later.  Somehow this personal incident becomes the most convincing aspect of his last two films, including Amour (Love) (2012), with Trintingant (now 87 years old) carrying out his beloved’s wishes.   

Looking back to his very first film, The Seventh Continent (Der Siebente Kontinent) (1989), suicide is a recurring theme throughout Haneke films, where the director has a desire to create a cinema of discomfort, inducing guilt and self-reflection, but actually seems to be elevating suicide to an ethical choice, much as Fassbinder did in what is arguably his most personal film, In a Year of 13 Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden) (1978).  The problem here is tone, as it becomes lost in comical amusement, much like Bud Court’s intrigue with death only makes viewers appreciate the vibrancy of life that much more.  This film, however, is more about failed expectations, and is not among Haneke’s best, content to rehash familiar themes of failed responsibility, class disparity, race, economics, moral hypocrisy, fidelity, family, marriage, carnal desire, and passion, even adding a touch of colonialist guilt, where special privileges for the wealthy seem to dominate throughout, viewing the world as if it exists exclusively for them, with money insulating them from reality.  One particularly revelatory scene shows Anne reprimanding her live-in Moroccan butler (Hassam Ghancy) for allowing Anne’s own dog to bite his daughter, bringing chocolates for the bleeding child, who is in tears, ultimately minimizing the damage, offering a payoff to make it go away, which as far as she’s concerned settles the issue.  The film ends with a family party set in a seaside restaurant with floor to window views of the ocean, basically the pompous aristocracy flaunting their wealth.  The party is crashed by her own son, Pierre, who apparently no one missed, leading his own personal crusade, showcasing the plight of poor African immigrants, creating pandemonium and a social awkwardness reminiscent of Östlund’s The Square (2017), which Georges uses as a diversionary tactic to carry out his own aims, failing miserably once again, to the point of comic absurdity, but causing the kind of consternation that seems to define this film.