Kogonada
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Connections, in both directions
Ostensibly a romantic drama in the vein of Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy and Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation,” “Columbus” joins together a pair of seemingly different people — both with troubles to spare — and delights in them, well, delighting in each other.
What grows between them isn't romantic; their friendship echoing Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation in form and substance.
The film is not unlike a small-town rewriting of Lost In Translation, at a stretch, but without the facetiousness, without the strident cultural tourism, without the sentiment straining beneath the surface.
The pair bond in a way that’s intimate but non-sexual, rather like – in a muted, non-comic manner – the relationship between the Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson characters in Lost in Translation.
Imagine Lost In Translation set in a much sleepier metropolis than Tokyo.
This is one impressive feature debut by the South Korean immigrant Kogonada, who chose that name for himself, a homage to the moniker of Ozu’s Tokyo Story scenarist, Kogo Noda.
The name is a film-nerd nod to the writer of some of the greatest classics made by the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, such as Tokyo Story and An Autumn Afternoon .
Kogonada, who wrote the script and edited his film with an eye to the classic film symmetry of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, also follows another character.
In this short time, Jin and Casey take only baby steps toward a relationship, in a manner that recalls Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise.
This is not Before Sunrise : no romance blooms between Jin and Casey during their Socratic back and forth.
Kogonada is exploring a similar theme here, albeit with sensitivity towards the A.I, which is something we have seen rarely, but recently in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina.
Audiences shouldn’t go in expecting something like Ex Machina , despite some similar themes.
A punchy dance routine for multiple families of four opens After Yang , and it’s easily the most exhilarating sequence of its kind in a film about artificial intelligence since Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno’s sexy boogie in Ex Machina .
Set in the near distant future in unnamed Asia (feels like Japan), families do what families do—love, laugh, cry, and share experiences (a vibrant virtual video game dance tournament at the beginning of the movie that cleverly introduces every character we’ll meet in the film is outstanding and rivals Oscar Isaac’s disco boogie scene in the similarly thoughtful sci-fi film, “Ex Machina”).
The similarities between this film and another A24 film 2014’s Ex Machina are striking and will jump out to anyone familiar with both, but what sets After Yang apart is how its story leans more into its existential questions than its science fiction aspects and setting.
Blade Runner , Ex Machina oder A.I. sind nur ein paar wenige ausgewählte Beispiele, die diese Thematik auf die Leinwand gebracht haben.
The name is a film-nerd nod to the writer of some of the greatest classics made by the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, such as Tokyo Story and An Autumn Afternoon .
Baumbach adds a touch of magical realism with sequences where Jay walks through doors into his memories, almost akin to another recent film, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.
Less “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” (2025) and more “Eternity” (2025)…
Jay Kelly’s search inward has a touch of A Christmas Carol, Wild Strawberries (1957), and, for a more recent comparison, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025).
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced After Yang (2022)
Themes Plot
After Yang blends elements of Spike Jonze’s her and Steven Spielberg’s A.I. with Kogonada’s own brand of organic contemplation.
On paper it reads like an inverse A.I. Artificial Intelligence .
Blade Runner , Ex Machina oder A.I. sind nur ein paar wenige ausgewählte Beispiele, die diese Thematik auf die Leinwand gebracht haben.
Mandy cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, in an interview with IndieWire, described the process of making After Yang to “the conception of a good ramen broth.”
Teaming this time with Benjamin Loeb, who shot last year’s powerful Pieces of a Woman and Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy , there isn’t a frame wasted here: delicate and seductive one minute, fascinating and contemplative, yet always mesmeric, it fuses its ideas of the future (while not showing too much) with modern Far East architectural influences to whisk us off into the “near distant” while still feeling attached to the right now.
Benjamin Loeb ( Pieces Of A Woman ) is the cinematographer and you should remember his glorious work on the film, Mandy .
It’s a light plot that’s window dressing for a hypnotic meditation on time, responsibility, and art, reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy .
Tonally, the results aren’t far from Spike Jonze’s “Her,” though there are elements of “A.I.
I feel that the movie had a similar atmosphere to Her (2013) where the setting is just ever so slightly futuristic, and similarly explores emotional connections with artificial intelligence.
Not since Spike Jonze’s tender “Her” has a film found humanity in the most unexpected places, and “After Yang” not only finds it in artificial intelligence but, of all things, tea.
You can think of a somnambulistic intersection of elements and moods from Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina (2014) and Maria Schrader's I’m Your Man (2021).
Set in the not-so-distant future (similar to Spike Jonze’s Her ), an assistive android named Yang (Justin H. Min, in one of this year’s strongest supporting roles) suddenly malfunctions.
Instead, it has more in common with works about subtle human emotion that just happen to pay extremely close attention to their built environments: films like Luca Guadagnino’s 2002 I Am Love, which gazed upon Milan’s Villa Necchi Campiglio ; Antonioni’s industrial love letter Red Desert (1965); or Brian de Palma’s Body Double (1984).
Instead, it has more in common with works about subtle human emotion that just happen to pay extremely close attention to their built environments: films like Luca Guadagnino’s 2002 I Am Love, which gazed upon Milan’s Villa Necchi Campiglio ; Antonioni’s industrial love letter Red Desert (1965); or Brian de Palma’s Body Double (1984).
Hitchcock made great play with houses, of course, with the metaphorical mansion of Psycho (1960), the perspective tricks of Rear Window (1954), and the bonkers Vandamm House of North by Northwest (1959).
Hitchcock made great play with houses, of course, with the metaphorical mansion of Psycho (1960), the perspective tricks of Rear Window (1954), and the bonkers Vandamm House of North by Northwest (1959).
While it relies upon a trope that’s growing tired for many viewers, it feels apt here — a commentary on the spiritual nature of architecture that reminded me of 2017’s Columbus.
Dick’s stories tends to arrive on screen dark – Blade Runner , Total Recall , A Scanner Darkly , Minority Report – but director Kogonada decides to go one better than any of those with a film that is almost stygian in its gloom.
Though it might feel like Linklater’s Before Sunset , the story is very turbulent.
Hitchcock made great play with houses, of course, with the metaphorical mansion of Psycho (1960), the perspective tricks of Rear Window (1954), and the bonkers Vandamm House of North by Northwest (1959).
There’s a touch of Richard Linklater, he of the ambulatory two-handers, and also of Jem Cohen, whose Museum Hours asked similar questions about our relationship to art and history, in these digressive discussions.
Instead, it has more in common with works about subtle human emotion that just happen to pay extremely close attention to their built environments: films like Luca Guadagnino’s 2002 I Am Love, which gazed upon Milan’s Villa Necchi Campiglio ; Antonioni’s industrial love letter Red Desert (1965); or Brian de Palma’s Body Double (1984).