For all of us, there was a great sense of symbiosis in how we received each other throughout, which was lovely.įarrell: A judo feeling, that’s cool. I didn’t find it hard to be still, and I had incredible support from all the other actors. I imagined there wouldn’t be a single raised voice, no impassioned pleas to the gods. Having seen Columbus, having felt how thoughtful and quiet and deliberate a filmmaker Kogonada is, I felt that After Yang was going to be an experience that was going to be an exposé of us all, as people and as actors. I found it very emotional to read, so I was nervous. How was it to dial it back?įarrell: When I read the script, I got this sense that there was going to be nowhere to hide if we were going to tell this story honestly. Colin, your work here is so different from some of your bigger performances. And with the glasses through which Jake can view Yang’s memories, I didn’t want him to wear some gigantic visor we were just going for minimalist, simple, and grounded. We grabbed any opportunity to integrate plants, so that’s why there are plants in the tunnels and cars – there was a real desire for it to be like a city in a forest. And at the time, it was gutted, so we got to design it from scratch. We found this lovely, very tiny Eichler house in New York, which is very rare. And because so much of the movie happens in the home, there had to be something open and interesting about that architectural dynamic. Here I wanted to have technology feel largely invisible. When I watch sci-fi, so much of it is metallic and glass and floating transparent screens. It was going to be largely organic, a future that had been humbled by environmental catastrophe, so they had to contend with nature. Kogonada: Production designer Alexandra Schaller and I discussed the future we wanted to put on screen. And there’s a fascination with architecture that was also evident in Columbus. The world in After Yang is so alluring – I love the production design. It was a good way for us all to get a little bit familiar with each other through an awkward, uncomfortable, but ultimately fun sequence. We shot it early on in the shoot, I think it was Jodie’s first day. My choreographer put it in the most lovely way, that this was like a pop of confetti at the beginning of the film, and everything else was like the confetti falling down to the ground.Ĭolin Farrell: It was just really fun. I’ve always loved that idea of seeing a family in sync, and this was a literalisation of it. They’re having breakfast, they’ve done it a thousand times, and then the rest of the film is about the dissolution of that family. Kogonada: There’s this film by Ozu called Early Summer where you see this family that’s really in sync. It’s just for the movie.”) The opening credits – featuring exuberant synchronised moves in a global virtual dance-off – are already being touted as among the year’s best. (When I note the cats’ appropriateness given the hushed ambiance of the film, Farrell jokes: “These cats are rentals. Kogonada and Farrell spoke with Vogue via Zoom from their homes, each with a satisfied cat dozing in his lap. With an original theme by legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and another haunting melody (a cover of “Glide” from the 2001 Japanese cult film All About Lily Chou-Chou) performed by Mitski, After Yang arrives in theatres in the US this week after premiering at Cannes last year. “We are all Yang,” as the Korean American director puts it. The second feature from Kogonada (who also directed 2017’s acclaimed Columbus) and adapted from a short story by Alexander Weinstein, this warm, unassuming sci-fi film proves to be among the finest ever made about Asian American identity, not to mention the latent memories and past lives, loves, and losses hardwired into us all. A subdued Colin Farrell plays the father, Jake, a tea-shop proprietor who discovers the so-called technobeing’s surprising past as he tries to repair him. Set in the near future, After Yang follows a family struggling with the malfunctioning of their beloved android, Yang (Justin H Min), who they have come to rely on as a surrogate big brother for their adopted Chinese daughter, Mika (the young Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja).
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