After Yang (2021)
This small budget near future science fiction film is not unlike Her and Ex Machina and I really wanted to like this film, but it doesn’t reach the heights of those other two.
It is about a couple who has an adopted daughter and the android Yang who works as a sort of bigger brother. Seems like a genuinely happy little family. One day Yang breaks down, it is out of warranty and fixing him doesn’t seem possible. This throws the family into a great deal of turmoil, conflicts and dilemmas.
Afterwards I read the original short story by Alexander Weinstein and I think the film script is a pretty good expansion, as the original story would not have been enough for a whole movie and the additions were quite interesting. It sets up a backdrop where there might be more hidden in this android technology than is publicly known, and the family faces some interesting ethical dilemmas with what to do with Yang’s memories. However, I think the film techniques the director applies makes the story very emotionally cold. The acting is very formal and restrained, far from natural. That could have been fine if the theme of the story was something different, but it really tries to sets itself up for a personal and emotional traumatic story. The score was incredibly manipulative in that regard, which often has the opposite effect on me when a film almost screams “this scene is really sad!”. While the various extra world building the film adds are interesting, it doesn’t follow through with them. The undertones of slight racism and conflicting worldviews on clones and androids are not really used for anything. The repairman and his desire for more knowledge on what the big corporations are doing with their surveillance could be really interesting, but that sidestory is just completely abandoned. Not that everything needs full resolution in a film like this, but it is annoying how it sets up several concepts with potential and doesn’t use them for anything at all.
But I also really appreciate that this film exists because I think there is a great lack of these types of smaller scale near future science fiction films, that can take on complicated issues with our relationship with technology. The script is great, but I didn’t like the directional choices made here.
Rating: 3