This film is absolutely wonderful. It is rich, quaint, beautiful, subdued, and powerful. So many things at the same time. Kogonada is able to create a whole new type of AI sci-fi from the world, to the atmosphere, to the focus, and so much more. The tangibles of the world created ground it and make it relatable. The acting is understated but very powerful. The visuals and how they interplay with the sound, especially those dealing with memories, is incredibly ingenious and effective. There’s just so much to love about this film.
What I think I appreciated most was it’s focus in on a particular part of being human that feels like it is being explored in new ways. A lot of sci-fi, AI movies tackle a lot about what it means to be human using the AI as a stand-in for humanity as the AI figures out who they are. But After Yang’s focus is more on Colin.
Farrell’s Jake and him figuring out something about his own humanity through the memories of Yang, the AI. This plays out in some incredible ways as Jake looks through a pair of glasses that allow him to explore Yang’s stored memory clips (which only allow for a few seconds to be stored each day due to his programming). The visuals of how these memories are explored are incredible. And they often will interplay with Jake’s own memories as he tries to piece together his own memory with Yang’s stored ones. This is where the sound design comes in to really speak profoundly about the mystery of our memories.
Another thing incredible is how this focus on memories is so incredibly profound. So much of who we are is built on our daily experiences stored as memories. When you meet another person or even spend your life with someone, there is so much more deep in them than you could ever know, and there is something so beautiful about that. For one, there is always so much more to know and understand about another person. Second, we must learn to build more empathy and grace into our lives, knowing that there are things beneath the surface of others that we cannot see. There’s an incredible sequence in the film where Jake finds a whole new gigantic memory bank of a life Yang led that he had no clue about. It’s beautiful.
And that brings me to my last quick takeaway which is that there are so many incredible, beautiful, and important little tiny moments every day that we so often pass by. The look in someone’s eye. The way a blade of grass moves in the wind. The new question a child asks you. A smile. A tear. We cannot let those moments get away. Just like the way Jake describes tea in reference to a documentary (a real documentary at that), there really is so much in a moment of time.
