Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asia Weekly
The second feature film “After Yang,” written and directed by South Korea’s Kogonada, aired on March 6 at the Northwest Film Forum as a presentation at the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, and should be available for home streaming soon. It’s a quiet, tender, loving film that’s better at asking questions than providing answers. But it raises questions by seeding them in the minds of viewers, allowing them to bloom in beauty and mystery. It’s a movie that walks out of the theater and talks about it and then goes home and tells the people around you.
I forgot, of course, that we live in the 21st century. These days, you can watch, share and think about your personal device. Based on a short story by Alexander Weinstein, Kogonada’s scenes take place in the distant future and incorporate extrapolations from things most people have already lived.
Korean-American actor Justin H. Min as Yang himself, a Chinese robot for a little Chinese girl Mika (played by Chinese-Indonesian-American actress Maria Emma Chandra Vegaja) Purchased as siblings. Mika’s adoptive parents Jack (Irish actor Colin Farrell) and Kayla (Jamaica-British actress Judy Turner-Smith) were unable to adopt their second child. They want Mika’s big brother, and someone who reminds Mika of her Chinese heritage.
Yang is like a member of the family, most of the time, everyone else forgets that he is not human. This may seem a bit far-fetched, but keep in mind that during the Furby boom circa 1998, Furby owners would get frustrated if Furbys were broken or worn out. Furbys are cute, cuddly, and furry, but their vocabulary is only a few dozen words at most. They can’t know your name. They can’t be specific to any one person.
But as Dr. Mary Aiken and other cyber psychologists have pointed out, that’s enough for most children and even most adults. They know Phoebe is just a toy, but they inspire true love.
Yang, more like a real person, can easily inspire true love. Until one day, he broke down and became inert. Jack and Kayla can overcome this. But Mika can’t. She wants her Yang back, and she can’t wait.
Part of the film’s mild comedy is that even in the future, the family difficulties seem familiar, and the consequences are familiar. Make a bulk purchase on something that isn’t exactly new and you risk having little or no recourse if it fails. You are saving money in the short term, but you are gambling. If you lose your bet, you may see high fees just to fix the problem. At least there’s the endless conundrum of Western life: there’s never enough money to explore all the options, especially the more preferable ones.
However, Mika doesn’t care about that. She knew her brother was a little different, but she wanted him to be fixed, not replaced. Her parents sent her a different message on this. It’s also something else parents are doing at the moment. They both love their daughter, but they can’t agree on how to calm her down.
Jack joins Young on a journey of the possible and the impossible, taking him through the possible and impossible in life, love, and family. He’ll find answers that lead him to more questions. He will discover Yang’s journey through things Yang never designed, things Yang could not theoretically do.
But the movie refuses to settle, like most movies. Some key questions remain. Can we love inanimate things? The aforementioned Phoebe fan answered the question: yes. Dr. Aiken and others were surprised and skeptical about our growing reliance on electromechanical partners. What are the possible long-term effects of telling kids to put their love on something they don’t love?
Among other questions, however, “After Yang” raises a question that may be the opposite of the above. What if electronics, machinery, learn to love back?
Andrew is available at info@nwasianweekly.com.
